Agglomeration
by Silver Pard
Summary: A collection of half-forgotten meme fills, with a disproportionate number of crossovers and at least a fifty percent chance of being utter crack.
1. Domestic Debate

A/N: It was delete something or post something, and I flipped a coin. Since I am incapable of a medium between those two options, instead of running through my stories clicking delete, I decided to try and find all the Sherlock meme fills I'd forgotten. So, oldest first (ish):

**Prompt:** John and Sherlock at a crime scene where the victim has been decapitated, and Sherlock asks Lestrade if he can have the head after the case is solved, which starts an argument between John and Sherlock about getting a new head when they still have to old one in the fridge. With everyone else at the crime scene just watching them in horror.

* * *

**Domestic Debate**

"No," John says.

"But-"

"_No_," John says, in a tone that obviously hadn't seen the light of day since Afghanistan, a 'god-help-me-if-you-don't-obey-my-orders-right-now-I-am-going-to-fuck-you-up' tone. Donovan relaxes just a little. Lestrade waits for the punchline. "Sherlock, we've already got a severed head, remember? It's in the fridge."

Lestrade is the only one that looks like he saw that coming. Strangely, a lot of people still think John is sane, despite the fact that he willingly shares a flat with Sherlock Holmes and blogs about murders.

"Yes, but that's for a completely different experiment!"

"We don't have anywhere to put it!"

"You can't be serious," Anderson says weakly. Nobody pays him any attention.

"The kitchen table," Sherlock says triumphantly.

"Is already covered with your chemical experiments. I don't want to come home and find you've inadvertently succeeded in creating a zombie."

"Don't be ridiculous, John," Sherlock huffs. "None of the chemicals I'm currently working with will react in any way to dead flesh other than to maybe destroy it. Besides, a zombie consisting of just a head? That's not scary, that's pathetic."

"I have to cook in that kitchen!" John tugs at his hair, looking exasperated. The police officers look mildly nauseated and completely horrified at his priorities.

"There's a Chinese restaurant just down the street!"

"We can't keep it un-refrigerated, Sherlock, that's – you're thinking of putting it on the mantelpiece, aren't you."

"But I need to know the rate of decay at room temperature! Empirically!"

"You just want to wait until the flesh rots off and you can have another Yorick."

"I miss my skull," Sherlock says. The expression on his face is something close to a pout. "I get bored when you're out and talking out loud to myself is just crazy."

"And talking to a skull is so much better."

"Yes," Sherlock says, apparently missing the sarcasm dripping from that statement.

Lestrade coughs. John acknowledges his attempt to get their attention while still glaring at Sherlock. Sherlock hasn't quite managed to erase his innate politeness, but is working at carefully dismantling it by degrees. For example, small talk is irrelevant and unnecessary.

"I don't think I agreed to you keeping the head anyway."

Sherlock whirls and finally gives Lestrade his full attention. "But Lestrade–"

"That's someone's family, Sherlock. Someone will want to bury him. They'd probably prefer to have his head."

"Details!" Sherlock flails. "Irrelevant! He's dead, what does it matter if he rots underground with his head or not?"

He pauses. Everyone stares at him, waiting for him to get the hint. He looks at John. "...Not good again?"

"Not really," John says mildly.

"I thought you were working on that," Donovan says dryly. "In your dual function as Sherlock-translator and Sherlock-humaniser."

"I think that last is working in reverse," Anderson says.

Sherlock sighs. "Well, if you're not going to let me have the head, we're off. Come on, John."

"Sherlock, the murd–"

"Haven't I given you enough clues? If you can't work it out in five hours, I'll send you a text."


	2. Protocols

**Prompt:** 28 Days Later style zombie apocalypse? John is in his element but Sherlock thinks the whole thing is a bit of a nuisance.

...most of this ended up in A Brief Account anyway. There was a reason I originally just called it 'Yay, Crack!' (...Which would be that I am terrible at names and never thought I'd be owning up to it.)

* * *

**Protocols**

"Well that's not right," Sherlock says, and ducks behind John just in time to avoid a flailing arm.

John shoots the corpse trying haplessly to paw itself out of the bath. "It's not typical, no."

"Have I been spoiled?" Sherlock wonders. "All those years of cadavers staying still when I experimented on them?"

"No, that _is _the typical state of affairs," John assures him. "This is the aberration."

"Are you sure?" Sherlock says. "I hate to mention it, but I've just looked outside–"

"Oh my God," John says, darting past him and staring out of the window.

"It's not that bad," Sherlock says, more because he has the vague idea that he ought to say something comforting than because he has any idea why anybody would need comforting. "More of a nuisance, really, although I don't think we're going to be eating at China Dynasty again any time soon."

"I'm not upset about the zombies," John says. "I've just realised I've let my protocols lapse."

"Pardon?" Sherlock says. John translates it as: _when did you start speaking Mycroft? I knew I should have put my foot down about the random kidnapping when I had the chance._

"It's a zombie apocalypse," John says cheerfully. "Don't tell me you haven't prepared for one?"

"... And you have?"

"Of course I have," John says. "But somehow I ended up using more bullets on people trying to kill you than on corpses coming back from the dead and got so used to that state of affairs that I didn't think to replace them."

"That is a pity," Sherlock says mildly. "You know there's something clawing at the door?"

"It's alright," John says. "I learnt other stuff in the army too. Where'd you put that sword from the Blind Banker case anyway?"


	3. Hooves Horn Sparkle

**Prompt:** So, we've had unicorn!Sherlock. And zombie invasion. But not in the same fic. GO GO GO

...Yeah. I was not drunk when I wrote this. I have no excuse.

* * *

**Hooves. Horn. Sparkle.**

The zombies John expected. The zombies John had prepared for. The zombies John had been hoarding supplies for since he was about eight.

Nothing, however, had prepared him for this.

"A unicorn," he said faintly.

Sherlock nodded, looking distinctly unimpressed with John's inability to cope with such minor fact. Also, distinctly non-equine.

"I need a drink," John decided.

Sherlock looked quite put-out. There was something... iridescent... about his skin. John tried to tell himself it was the adrenaline, but even surrounded by death on all sides in Afghanistan, he'd never hallucinated sparkles before.

"No," John corrected himself, almost wistfully, "If I drink I can't deal with the zombies." He paused. "But if I drink, this conversation will make so much more sense..."

Sherlock's expression was one John privately called his 'most definitely, whatever gave you that ridiculous idea, not a pout' look. John ignored it.

Zombies John was okay with. Zombies everybody expected. Unicorns – unicorns not so much. And so, while John was a little sad to lose the zombies, there really was only one conclusion he could make–

"I must be dreaming," he said, and felt better.

The most-definitely-not-a-pout became ever more pout-like. "You didn't say that when the zombies started rising. You thought it was all perfectly fine." Sherlock said, sounding irritated. "You didn't think it was a dream when the BBC played that footage of Her Majesty picking them off with a rifle either."

"Yeah, but I've always secretly suspected the Queen was capable of kicking arse and taking names in an epic and refined manner. I've _never_, secretly or otherwise, suspected my flatmate might be a mythological creature associated with... with... virgins ... and hearts... and..." Mythology had never been John's strong point. "...And _rainbows_."

"Now you're getting me confused with a gay pride parade. Stop it."

"Well, you _are _sparkling. That's pretty damn gay, and experience backs me up on this – Mister Mistoffelees, Edward Cullen..."

"Honestly, just because a man is capable of an extremely physically demanding dance – Should I mention the Edinburgh Tattoo?"

John had to concede the point. He tried to ignore the half-formed suspicion that Sherlock was hinting he knew of John's participation in the Sword Dance. Which had to come with a disclaimer about how difficult it was or else it just looked... un-Scottish. "Not going to make an excuse for Edward Cullen?"

"There is no excuse for Edward Cullen," Sherlock said darkly.

John nodded. He was never going to forgive Harry for inflicting those books – and then the movies, oh unmerciful God – on him. Speaking of siblings – "Wait. Hang on. Mycroft can't be a... you know, can he?"

"Of course he's a unicorn," Sherlock said, looking insulted. "You do recall the little fact of him being my brother?"

"But Mycroft can't be a unicorn!" John sputtered. "Unicorns are – are – well, all sweetness and light and rainbows–"

"_Again _with the rainbows–"

"Mycroft kills people! A century ago he'd be the one instigating a war and killing millions of people over the price of tea, and he still might today, I dunno–"

"In my correct shape," Sherlock said stiffly, "I have a horn in the centre of my forehead. It's not for hanging daisy chains."

"..." John said.

"Not to mention, John, have you ever treated a man who was been kicked in the head by horse? No, because they tend to end up in the morgue, where they are of more use to my line of work."

The zombies finally decided they'd been ignored long enough by the moving meals and groaned loudly to reassert their presence.

John gave them a glance, then raised an eyebrow at Sherlock. "Are you more dangerous in this shape or unicorn-shaped?"

"Hooves. Horn. Sparkle," Sherlock said. "Let me deal with them."


	4. as old and as true as the sky

**Prompt:** We've had a couple of werewolf John fics, and, well, I'd like some more - maybe looking more at the way his lupine behaviours come out. Like, we've had a pack!prompt, so maybe more with territoriality (maybe him being embarrassed that he has the urge to mark his place on things?) and how restless he becomes at the full moon - how blood at crime scenes sets off urges in him - how he placates the urge to hunt and fight.

...Everybody's gotta do a Were!Watson fic at some point. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

* * *

**as old and as true as the sky  
**

John doesn't have a calendar showing the moon cycles; he doesn't need one. He can feel it by the itch under his skin where the wolf stirs, by the way he starts to pace the confines of the flat. He tries to stop himself, hold himself still, but the itch of the wolf's impatience is too much, and the walls suddenly too close.

(_now_)

To the wolf, the flat is their den and it doesn't appreciate being forced to stay inside as if it were a cub, when there is a hunt waiting, and territory that needs to be guarded.

At the full moon, everything is –

The wolf is intense, because most important to the wolf is _now_, not later. _Now_ is the time for a hunt, _now_ his territory needs to be marked and defended, _now_.

Everything is so much stronger at the full moon. Instincts John has learned to placate or accept or adapt to are suddenly overwhelming.

(_this is the Law of the Jungle, and the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper)_

The wolf talks a lot, in its way, but only at the full moon does John really feel like everybody is talking in a foreign language and expecting him to understand. Or maybe he's the one talking in a foreign language, and wondering why they aren't _listening_.

It's little things that do it. He'll meet their eyes and they'll look down and away first, but then they continue to act as if they're in charge. So he'll meet their eyes again, the wolf irritated and impatient, and _again_, they'll look down or away, show that they know he's stronger, put themselves beneath him in the order of things, and the wolf will back off, pleased – and they'll _still_ be 'are you listening, _I'm _in charge here, you can't do that–'

John smiles close-mouthed these days, because it makes the wolf's hackles rise when it sees everyone around him showing teeth. _Aggression, surrounded, not-pack_, the wolf says.

_Laughter, smiles, friendly gathering, close-stranger-pack_, John says. It makes him tense and defensive and – "You're really not good at this social gathering thing, are you?" Lestrade will say sympathetically, buy him another drink and tell him he's been around Sherlock too long.

He tips back his head when Sherlock is angry and frustrated, shows his throat, but it doesn't soothe him the way the wolf thinks it should, doesn't make him calm down, doesn't stop him from snarling and snapping at empty air.

It's frustrating beyond belief, to suddenly be stuck speaking a language nobody else knows.

(_but the Wolf that shall break it must die_)

Worst of all is if they visit a crime scene. A murder. A lot of crimes are committed when the moon is high, language shows itself: _lunaticus_, moonstruck.

Moonstruck, John sniffs at a corpse and instead of _female, healthy, in her prime, intoxicated at death, starting to rot_ all he can really smell is _prey, carrion_. It takes far longer than it should to untangle the scents, to be able to smell anything other than food.

John is well-fed; the wolf is well-fed. But sometimes it's not food in the fridge but severed heads. John is sickened by the idea of it as carrion, and the wolf doesn't like the smell of chemicals and thinks it's months too rotted to be worth eating anyway, but then they go to a crime scene, and there's meat on the ground, even if it smells like deodorant and soap and shaving cream and alcohol and sex – meat is all it is, and the wolf is always hungry on a full moon night.

John doesn't hate the wolf. It has its way of looking at things and John has his, and more often than not it's the wolf shaking its head and wrinkling its muzzle in disgust. The wolf makes him faster, stronger, lends him its senses and unique perspective. He can't afford to hate himself, and the wolf is part of him now.

But.

Full moon nights John runs, that steady loping run that swallows miles. Full moon nights John goes through his territory, carefully, methodically – and it doesn't really bear thinking about, what he'll do if he ever finds a creature in it that might be capable of challenging him.

(New Scotland Yard is not technically John's. There are wolves on the force, it's their territory – but John makes a brief circuit there anyway, just in case. For Lestrade – _packmate's former/original/not-quite pack _– and for Sally. Even Anderson, since he's Sally's. Even if the wolf thinks she could choose a far better mate, it's the female's choice, and she's an alpha if ever there was one.)

He sings to the moon – and gets a chorus of curses every time, it sounds _beautiful_, the city song – and sometimes he plays, and sometimes he hunts (and petty crime in their area has decreased somewhat worryingly for Sherlock's boredom threshold). He doesn't think, not really, he just... full moon nights he just _is,_ and if that's wolf or man or something that's both, it doesn't matter.

When he approaches the flat near dawn, Sherlock is always waiting, even if he is pretending not to have moved since the evening before – as if John can't smell that he has.

He greets John with a quiet murmur, presses his fingers into John's ruff. John jumps on to the sofa and stretches out beside him, despite the fact that there's no space, and the heat of his body and fur must make his presence smothering on a summer night.

_Mine_, says the wolf, closing its eyes, comforted by Sherlock's warmth and scent and heartbeat. _pack_ and _mate_ and _mine_.

_Sherlock_, John says, but the meaning is the same.


	5. Narrative Causality

**Prompt:** Sherlock/Discworld.

...

That is all.

...'title it the first thing you can think of' strikes again!

* * *

**Narrative Causality**

[In which Stamford plays an unappreciated part and Mycroft presumes the laws of gravity are laws for everybody else.]

The bar was the sort of place Sherlock preferred to visit under an alias. It was the sort of place that looked like _it _was using an alias. Probably for a good reason.

He walked in anyway, because he'd discovered that if you walked into a place like you belonged there, people would treat you as if you did.

He was right. To be fair, he was seldom wrong, but it was always nice to have a theory strengthened.

Stamford, sitting in a corner and watching a little blue figure at the front of the bar gulp something that should be kept away from an open flame, thought, as he always did when he saw Sherlock Holmes, _how does he do that?_

"Sherlock," he greeted, knowing Sherlock's grasp of social niceties only went so far and 'hello' was regarded as an annoying and unnecessary word that he wasn't sure was absolutely essential to the language. "How's Mycroft doing these days?"

Stamford always asked after Mycroft because it made Sherlock pull a face like he'd eaten something extremely sour. It was petty, sure, but with Sherlock Holmes, you took what you could get, and the Look of Disgust went a long way to making you feel better about dealing with someone who insulted you every five seconds.

"The same as ever," Sherlock said irritably. "Sits in the Library alternating between doing nothing and whacking the laws of reality with an umbrella."

"Don't you mean a staff?" Stamford enquired with a look of absolute non-innocence.

Sherlock gave him a look that said 'I know what you're doing and am going to make life very difficult for you. But I'll play along anyway because I will not be bested by your primitive little brain and its attempts to annoy me.' Amazing, the amount of words that could be put into a mere narrowing of the eyes. "Mycroft prefers an umbrella."

As everyone did when told this, Stamford dutifully asked, "But how can you be a wizard without a staff?"

(In fact, it was the eighth time he'd asked the dutiful question. It had yet to grow old. Or Sherlock's varying responses, for that matter.)

"A great deal more stylishly, as far as Mycroft is concerned. Besides which – he's a _wizard_. He spends most of his time actively trying to avoid doing anything remotely resembling magic."

It was probably not in his best interests, Stamford thought, to mention that he was convinced he'd once seen the elder Holmes brother leap gleefully off the University roof and use his umbrella to float down, transitioning smoothly from a glide through the air to a smugly amused strut on the ground.

The Holmes brothers, not to put too fine a point on it, were a little Odd.

"So," Sherlock said abruptly, apparently having filled his perceived quota of conversational niceties, "why exactly did you ask me to meet you here."

That was the thing about Sherlock Holmes, Stamford reflected. Even when something should have sounded like a query, there was a notable absence of a question mark. It was like he was trying to allow you the illusion that he didn't know exactly what you were thinking, but was thwarted by errant punctuation. He just couldn't make it _sound_ like he didn't know what you were thinking.

"Well," Stamford said. "You remember you've got your eye on that Baker Street place, but need someone else to make the rent?" He didn't note the extreme unlikelihood of this as being the true reason - Sherlock's clothing was the sort that coughed and murmured 'money' in an extremely discreet and refined manner that made sure it was noticed. "I've an old friend that's looking for a place as well."

He glanced back over at the little blue figure, knowing Sherlock would reach the necessary conclusions.

"A Nac Mac Feegle." Sherlock said blankly. For the first time in their acquaintance, he looked taken aback. Stamford hugged the feeling of smugness that came to him jealously. Okay, so it was his only by proxy, really, but he'd still made Sherlock Holmes blink like he'd seen a troll tapdance.

"He's a bit different," Stamford said, knowing that was all he needed to seal the deal. "You remember that Klatchian business? Wee John there joined the army and–" Stamford lowered his voice. "–_lost his accent. _Don't mention it, he doesn't like to be reminded of it."

"Yer tryin' ta say ah'm saft or summat? Yer gettin' chibbed fer that!"

"...I thought you said he lost his accent?" Sherlock said, watching the pictsie wave an empty bottle at a troll.

"Psychosomatic," Stamford shrugged. "A fight comes up he remembers perfectly, but everyday? Poor bugger, he can't even shout waily about it. He's so depressed he can't even look for fights, they have to come for him. It's tragic, I tell you. Go on, talk to him. You'll see."

Sherlock stood and made his way over. Goodbye, evidently, was for other people. Stamford poured himself a drink and congratulated himself on a job well done. He still wasn't sure what Mycroft was planning, but a combination of Nac Mac Feegle and Sherlock Holmes could only work out as hilarious.


	6. The Old Chestnut

**Prompt:** Sherlock Holmes, Sirius Black and Crowley walk into a bar.

This marks Crowley's first (but hardly last) appearance in this collection – I did warn you. This is my brain... *shakes head*

* * *

The three men in the corner of the pub were all thin (in one case, almost to the point of starvation), dark-haired (ranging from fashionable to hasn't-seen-a-pair-of-scissors-since-Thatcher to curls), and scowling. Told that one of them was a demon, you probably wouldn't guess the right one.

(Nobody would be _surprised_ that a demon was drinking there, however. The Old Chesnut – it was the sort of place that had its name in oversized metal letters on the front of the building; consequently the first 't' had been stolen at some point in history, and the local accent ensured it remained lost – had that sort of (manufactured) history. Anyway, the demon was a regular.)

Crowley glared at Sherlock Holmes, who was oblivious. _Oblivious_. World's Greatest Detective, his arse.

Sherlock Holmes studied the clientele and was unimpressed. He was presumably also considering how to use his knowledge against said clientele for the terrible crime of being uninteresting.

Sirius Black cleared his throat. "Another round, gents?"

Crowley switched his glare to the other man. "Black. You can't buy. You can't even handle the currency."

"It's all the bits of paper," Sirius said, utterly unashamed. "I mean, what's the difference? It all looks the same to me."

"Unobservant," Sherlock sniffed, the worst insult anyone could receive as far as he was concerned. Crowley had a very different opinion. He'd caused a war the last time he used _his _worst insult. Mycroft had been very displeased.

(Mycroft was definitely one of Crowley's.)

"No shit," Crowley drawled. "Look, Black, there are _numbers in the corners_. It's not _that_ difficult. We're not talking pre-decimal any more. They even got rid of the halfpenny in '84! So, _how many pence to a pound?_"

He couldn't keep getting out of paying for his round, dammit! ...Even if Holmes got his drinks free because he cleared up a little bother for the bartender a few years ago, and Crowley charged his drinks to Hell.

After a long moment of thought, Sirius gave up with a shrug. "Dunno."

_Wizards. _Honestly, the commendation he'd got for (accidentally) creating the Statute of Secrecy just wasn't worth the hassle of dealing with their mired culture. It was a good thing the wizards were even more adept at creating their own problems than ordinary humans, because if Crowley had to deal with an entire subculture in the mould of Sirius Black on a regular basis, he'd discorporate himself.

"One hundred, you idiot." Crowley said with a sigh. "It used to be two hundred and forty, with twelve pence to a shilling, and twenty shilling to a pound. See how much easier you've got it now?"

The wizard shrugged again. "I don't see why we can't just drink at The Leaky Cauldron."

Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose. "Because _some_ of us remember what Sherlock is capable of doing with a magnifying glass, four sickles, a pack of playing cards and a Horklump, and don't want to see a repeat."

"So it's not because I'm a wanted mass-murderer?" Sirius said, looking about as innocent as Aziraphale when Crowley demanded to know what had happened to the last teacake that had most definitely been on the plate when he left the room five minutes ago.

Sherlock snorted quietly from his corner, where he was analysing the different types of dirt on various patrons' shoes. Crowley waved a hand dismissively. "How many knuts in a galleon?" He demanded, returning to the previous conversation.

"Four hundred and ninety-three," Sirius responded promptly. "That's different."

"No it bloody isn't," Crowley insisted.

"Gentlemen," Sherlock said irritably, out of dirt samples. "Are you going to bicker over exchange rates or are we going to drink?"

"Someone's pissy," Sirius grinned. "What, boyfriend not putting out?"

Reality didn't tend to realign with Sherlock's wishes as it did Crowley's, and so his glare couldn't actually kill the other man, but Sirius flinched anyway.

"Oh, but Sirius," Crowley said delightedly, his previously empty wine glass suddenly full of a rather surprised Cabernet Sauvignon, "It's _colleague_, isn't it, Sherlock?"

Sherlock's glare moved from 'I hope you die a miserable death in a ditch' to 'I will kill you with a spoon and use your heart for a decorative ornament'.

"Oh, low blow," Sirius winced, shaking his head in commiseration.

"John is a dear friend and it doesn't matter how he refers to himself – Should we bring into this discussion your dubious relationship with your opposite number? I'm sure Hell would be delighted to hear all about it."

"Every time I think we've hit the bottom, it just keeps getting nastier," Sirius remarked to nobody in a tone of deep admiration.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Crowley said mildly. "And if you keep that up, _you_ won't know either."

"Hey, hey, I thought we agreed we couldn't use memory charms on the only muggle!"

"Particularly when he's one of the few humans who uses his brains? Yes. But Sirius, you remember that time in–"

"...Yes?"

"– when you–"

"...Yes."

"– and then he–"

"Oh Merlin."

"– and you woke up a week later with a potato–"

"Aargh!"

"_Exactly. _Besides, it's not like he can't deduce everything that occurred and turn up next month as if nothing happened."

"Rather unfair of you to use magic though," Sherlock said mildly.

"No it's not," Sirius argued, suddenly on the other side of the debate with the reacquired memory of That Time. "Any other muggle, maybe, but _you –_ Merlin's ratty hat, what did you _do _to those Death Eaters?"

"We had a chat," Sherlock said mildly.

"One of them was found in a monastery!"

"He's been talking to Aziraphale," Crowley said. His smile was rather... pointed. "Which is _cheating_. I'm so proud."

"And two of 'em will never use their arms again, even with magic," Sirius continued, oblivious.

"Well, you see, John has this thing about terrorists. He likes to see them out of commission permanently."

"And we're not even talking about the four that – well. I still can't work out how you managed that."

'Mycroft?' Crowley mouthed.

Sherlock made a face somewhat akin to a cat that thought it had catnip and then realised it had an orange peel. _Mycroft_.

"But enough about war! Any birthdays coming up?"

Crowley exchanged a Look with Sherlock. "I was never born, Sherlock thinks social niceties are for the weak and it's not like _you_ can go dancing in the street without acquiring a conga line of police – sorry, aurors."

"Just trying to lighten the mood," Sirius said with cheerful indifference to the Look.

"Why do we drink with him?" Crowley asked Sherlock.

"He introduced you to the best firewhiskey in London."

"Right, right."

"That, and you have a bet with Aziraphale."

"Who told you – wait. Never mind."

"Gentlemen, my glass is empty! _My glass is empty!_"

Hopefully Aziraphale was having about as much fun as Crowley was at this point...

* * *

"No, Mycroft, I insist. The world can run without you for ten minutes while you enjoy this fruitcake."

"I'm on a diet, Aziraphale, I really must–"

"Blueberry cheesecake?"

"Oh, very well."

"Delighted to hear it, my dear. Tea, John?"

"Please."

"And you, Remus?"

"No, thank you. Still got a scone to finish."

Aziraphale beamed at them.

Seemingly unable to help themselves, they grinned back.

It really was too bad, the things he and Mycroft had to do to give them time for these little chats.

(Mycroft was definitely one of Aziraphale's.)


	7. A Very Different Sort Of Unicorn

...and this my brain on the Sherlock meme.

**Prompt:** Sherlock is a unicorn. John is a fairy. They're in love.

Not in the actual prompt, but also said by the OP (I swear): _I would love you forever if you managed to do it seriously. But crack is also awesome :D _and in response to a question about Tinkerbell fairy versus Fae fairy: _TINKERBELL. OMG TINKERBELL_.

Next up: bunnies!

* * *

**A Very Different Sort of Unicorn**

"I love you," John said.

The unicorn snorted, tossing his head. "I know that," he said, with something that resembled irritated patience in his voice. "_Everybody _knows that. Your kind can only keep one strong emotion straight in their head at a time."

"No," John said, flicking his wings indignantly. The unicorn shook his head and sneezed at the glittering fairy dust. "This is different."

"Everybody always thinks 'this is different' when it involves them," the unicorn said. "It never is. It's so very dull."

John scowled and pretended not to hear him.

"What kind of name for a fairy is 'John' anyway?" The unicorn asked idly.

John tried to keep hold of his thought, because it was a good thought and needed to be said, but he was easily distracted, like all of his kind. "A good name," he said proudly, glowing pink with pride and pleasure. "You know how we value names. How humans try and bind us in circles sometimes. They have to use our name to keep us, and they always guess things like 'Mustardseed' and 'Peaseblossom' and 'Tinkerbell', which are the right sort of things, and they never think of 'John'."

"Unicorns don't have names," the unicorn said, grey eyes unreadable.

"Then how do you distinguish yourselves? How does anyone else know you are _that_ unicorn and not _that _one?"

"You know who I am," the unicorn pointed out. "Even without a name."

"That's because I love you," John said, and returning to the idea he had been trying to talk about earlier brought back all the thundering emotion that sometimes seemed too much for his tiny body.

"True," the unicorn said.

"You are – _prickly and solitary and irritable and very intelligent and not very wise_," John said after a moment, in a human language, for the fairy language took into account who/what was being addressed and he couldn't talk to any unicorn – never mind _his _unicorn – honestly. He could be truthful, of course – he couldn't lie – but that was a very different thing. "I would know you anywhere, and – and so would others, I suppose. You are a very different sort of unicorn."

"Thank you," the unicorn said dryly. "That is a compliment indeed."

"_I _thought so," John said, patting the unicorn's horn, leaving a glittering gold handprint. "I know how much you dislike your brother."

"Unicorns are usually solitary, you know," the unicorn said. "Some of us are quite Wild."

"_You _are quite mad," John said fondly, and did not mention that he was not quite sure he was following the conversation.

"Yes," the unicorn said. "I suppose. It lets you see very clearly, does madness. That's something to be valued." _Normal is so dull._

"You see everything," John said, which was the truth, but not the whole truth, and so could be said in the fairy language that sounded like bells. What John wanted to say, but would have had to use a human tongue to say it, was: 'You see everything so clearly you are always blind to something.'

"We are solitary, but for us that is a very different thing to feeling alone," said the unicorn, who could keep track of a conversation with multiple strands, unlike a fairy.

John frowned. "But you are lonely," he said.

"I am a very different sort of unicorn."

"Yes," John said, and smiled brightly. Being a fairy, he was very good with the difference between what was said and what was meant. And when the unicorn said 'I am a very different sort of unicorn', John understood that what he meant was 'other unicorns do not feel like I do'. "So I am here. With you."

The unicorn nodded, and smiled a unicorn-smile that had something of mortal tenderness in it.

Fairies like John, who could fit in the palm of a human's hand, can only keep one strong emotion in their head at a time. When they are angry, their rage can not be settled by anything but destruction of the thing that prompted it. When they are sad, nothing soothes it but to find the other extreme and when they love –

_I love you_, John did not say, hands tangled into the unicorn's mane. _I love you all the time, it is there when I am happy because it is what makes me happy, it is there when I am sad because it hurts me so; every emotion I feel can be tied to it, it is there when I sleep, when I wake. And you are a unicorn._

Unicorns were not like fairies. Unicorns were not like anything but unicorns.

Unicorns were true immortals and Love was a mortal thing.

_But._

John watched the unicorn, talking so quickly and so rapid you would never guess he had forever to say everything he wanted to say, and taking note of everything with his metal-grey eyes, so unlike the eyes of any other unicorn.

_But you are a very different sort of unicorn._


	8. The Road To Inlé

**Prompt:** BBC!Sherlock in the context of the world of **Watership Down**. Everyone is a rabbit - Lestrade is in the Owsla, Mycroft is the Black Rabbit of Inle. Looking to keep it strictly gen, the rest is up to anon.

About the names: Lestrade's name is combination of eleer (winter) and hay (to see, watch or watching). Gregory means 'watchful' and Lestrade seems the pessimistic sort?

One of the accepted meanings of 'Sherlock' is 'fair or bright-haired', so hythlay is 'shine-fur' or shining fur.

Hrarainlé is a combination of 'hrarail' and 'inlé' and literally means 'chase moon'. In the mythological context it could be considered equivalent to 'chase-devil', which is another name for the medicinal herb St John's Wort, so John's name can be read as either the plant name or 'chasing the Black Rabbit'.

...well, I was pleased with myself.

* * *

**The Road To Inlé**

The first time:

Winter hadn't been a member of the Owsla long and it was his first raid. It could also have been his last, and nearly was.

He cowered in the thin bramble hedge, barely two rabbit-lengths wide, his back pressed against a wire fence, watching the dog snarling and snapping and forcing its gigantic muzzle through the bramble towards him, ignoring the thorns.

"Quite the situation," the Black Rabbit said softly in his ear.

Winter shuddered and almost bolted, never mind that it would be impossible to escape either the dog or the Black Rabbit.

"Not yet, I think," the Black Rabbit decided after a moment, finally looking sway from Winter's stupefied gaze. "There's still a use for you."

Just as the dog was about to force its way in enough to catch Winter in its jaws, its master whistled sharply, and whining, it was forced to retreat.

Winter stayed in the hedge until he could no longer taste the nothingness of the Black Rabbit on his tongue, and then made his way back to the warren. It took him until Frith rise to notice the grey fur at the base of his left ear, the spot the Black Rabbit had pressed his muzzle to whisper into his ear.

* * *

The second time:

He hadn't thought he'd been that ill, but when he opened his eyes and saw the Black Rabbit, he realised he was obviously mistaken.

"This won't do at all," the Black Rabbit said, unexpectedly fussy, like a mother doe irritated with her kits, and Winter giggled.

"Get up," the Black Rabbit snapped. "I know where some comfrey can be found."

"Want to sleep," Winter mumbled.

"You will have nothing _but _sleep in the end, Eleerhay. Get up now."

Nobody ever used his full name. Winter got up, and made his way, staggering, up the burrow. "What won't do?" he said, dazedly. Fever robbed the Black Rabbit of his terror, it seemed, for the mere sight of his fur didn't make Winter shudder, and the nothingness of his scent didn't make him bolt.

"Take care, Eleerhay, though of course we will meet again."

A short time after, Winter met the most irritating yearling ever born in the warren, a buck by the name of Hythlay, who thought he could do Winter's job better than he could.

* * *

The third time:

"If we're going to make a habit of this," the Black Rabbit said, "you can call me Mycroft. For all farms are mine, and I wait for rabbits there more often than not."

"I'd rather not," Winter said. His heart raced in his chest even as the cat caught sight of something and darted away, leaving its prey behind. "I can't leave yet," he said, as if it was a matter of choice. "Hythlay still needs guidance, and watching," he said. Funny, what the Black Rabbit's presence brought to mind.

"_I,"_ the Black Rabbit said, "watch _everyone_."

* * *

The fourth time:

He was captain of the Owsla, leading a patrol, when he caught sight of the Black Rabbit once more. He slipped into the corner of Winter's vision and waited until he stopped and followed. There was an injured hlessi in the nettles, his shoulder torn open above old scar tissue, lying still as if he meant to die.

The Black Rabbit looked up as he licked the hlessi's shoulder clean of blood. "Eleerhay," he said. "This is Hrarainlé. Apt, don't you think? Come help him."

When the Black Rabbit calls your name, you've got to answer.

* * *

Hrarainlé settled in well in the warren. Well. He settled in, anyway. It was matter of opinion whether or not it was _well_.

There was frost on the ground every morning, and many rabbits took to sharing burrows to keep themselves warm. Hythlay was the exception of course, so stiff and proud he drove away any rabbit willing to share with him.

But Hrarainlé – Johnswort – was still healing, and Hythlay's burrow was the perfect location and really, Hythlay had to learn to share _sometime_.

All right, to be honest, Winter had just wanted the pair of them out of his fur.

He didn't expect it to actually work out.

* * *

The fifth time:

"This is a dream," Winter said.

Hythlay looked at him, unimpressed. "I had no idea you were the expert," he said.

Winter cuffed at him, but Hythlay slipped away like a fog. Sleek and quick, he settled next to the gaping hole in the earth where the warren used to be. "Something is playing with us," he said.

_Zorn_, the Black Rabbit said softly in his ear. _O zorn._

"Not going to happen," Winter snapped back.

"Then keep your guard up beyond Marlao," said the Black Rabbit.

"I see," Hythlay said.

"Well, someone's got to help _me_," Winter said.

"Oh, you know the saying, I'm sure," Hythlay said. "Just take it a little more literally."

The Black Rabbit pressed his paw against Winter's flank. It was colder than snow. "Remember," he said. "I am always watching."

It was even less comforting than the first time he said it.

* * *

Hythlay had noticed, of course. He'd looked at the tiny patch of silver fur where the Black Rabbit had touched and shaken his head. "They'll call you Silver by the end," he said.

He was a little better since Johnswort had started sharing his burrow, but that didn't say much.

"It's nothing," Winter insisted. "I'm getting old, that's all."

Hythlay wrinkled his nose at him as if he'd caught the scent of a fox. "Blind is what you are," he sniffed. "Frith only knows what your mother was thinking, naming you anything to do with _seeing_."

"It's nothing," Winter repeated.

Johnswort – it _was_ Johnswort, Winter remembered, except Hythlay always shortened it and he couldn't really blame him, _Hrarainlé _was something of a mouthful – entered the burrow and stopped short.

"Hello," he said warily.

Johnswort had been in the Owsla of another warren, Winter was pretty sure. He had that look about him, knew how things worked. Sometimes Winter thought he regretted the mass of scar tissue on Johnswort's shoulder more than Johnswort did – he would have loved to patrol with him; he would have been able to trust him to watch his back, not like with the young bucks he was always pulling out of trouble.

Then he remembered that if Johnswort had never been shot, he would never have become a hlessi, or found their warren, and anyway, he couldn't take from Hythlay the one thing that made him halfway bearable.

What _Hythlay's_ mother had been thinking, naming him anything other than 'thorn' or 'thistle' was beyond Winter. _Shining fur. What hraka._

"Hello," Winter said.

"John, come here. Have a look at the good captain and tell me what you see."

"One of those days, is it?" Johnswort sighed, rolling his eyes as he limped past and sat next to Hythlay.

"I don't see anything different," he said after a long moment.

It was Hythlay's turn to roll his eyes. "Blind, the lot of you. Look at his flank, John. There, you see?"

Johnswort gave Winter an apologetic look and peered closely at the fur. "Oh," he said after a moment. He sat back on his haunches and favoured Hythlay with an unimpressed look. "So his fur's going grey, what of it?"

"I am surrounded by idiots," Hythlay growled. "The shape, John!"

"It looks like a paw print. So?"

"Oh, never mind! Constantly _tharn_, the lot of you. I'm going to silflay."

They watched him go for a moment, before Winter turned to Johnswort and said "Does it really look like a paw print?"

"Yes," Johnswort said, turning awkwardly to try and tend his shoulder. "It's rather interesting."

"Interesting," Winter said. "Yes."

_They'll call you Silver by the end._

He combed his ears and tried to pretend Hythlay's certainty didn't unsettle him.

* * *

The sixth time:

A hare laughed out in the field.

"That was close, wasn't it." It wasn't a question.

Winter nodded, heart still thudding.

"Why, if the hrududu hadn't slowed for that deer earlier, you'd be quite the mess."

"Well, I'm not," Winter said.

The Black Rabbit cuffed the side of his head, as if he were still a kitten, running too far from the burrow. "Mind yourself," he said sharply, turning and bounding away.

* * *

"I've seen rabbits go grey," Johnswort said, "But never so fast or in such odd patterns." He looked at Winter seriously. "You should stop."

"Stop what?"

"I'm sure you know."

"I'd have thought _you–_" Winter began, and stopped. Johnswort was not the only translation of Hrarainlé's name.

"It's you that chases the Black Rabbit, not I," Johnswort said.

* * *

The seventh time:

Only Hythlay could make an enemy of a hare, for Frith's sake.

Winter darted a quick glance to John, crouched low, eyes fixed on Hythlay. Against the bulk of the hare, he looked even smaller than normal.

"I'll burn you," the hare said, in the sing-song tone hares took in their _marlao_, though it was half a year past.

"I'd like to see you try," Hythlay snapped.

"No sense of self-preservation at all," the Black Rabbit said. "You'd think he'd be the one chasing my shadow, not you."

There was something very different about the Black Rabbit this time, something terrible in him that took Winter back all those seasons to their first meeting in the brambles.

"Eleerhay," the Black Rabbit said.

Winter squared his shoulders and lunged for the hare.

When the Black Rabbit says your name, you've got to answer.


	9. The Baker Street Irregulars

**Prompt: **I could have sworn there was a BBC!Sherlock/Neverwhere crossover somewhere on this meme.

Either point me in it's direction, or DRAG OUR DEDUCTING DUO RIGHT THROUGH THOSE MOTHERFUCKING CRACKS.

...I still have not finished the sequel explaining this. That is what I get for owning a Dell laptop.

* * *

**The Baker Street Irregulars**

They called themselves the Lost Boys long before there was a Peter Pan.

There are, at present, more girls than there are boys, and more of them are adults than children, but a Name is a big thing, and if you lost a name, you lost a piece of London. A small piece, but with a name went history, went memory, went the Shape of Below.

They aren't ageless, but sometimes it feels that way. Their numbers ebb and flow and remain constant at the same time. Their members vanish and are replaced over and over, one by one, in such a way that they can always track themselves back by memory and name – Raggedy was taken in by Highgate, brother of Little Jim, who'd been brought into the fold by Candle, who'd been tricked in by Ember and Ally...

They call their leader Pan or Peter these days, but he can't name a house, a barony or a court: not a single patch of London is theirs. He is the leader because they want someone who has to talk when nobody else wants to – if the Marquis is calling in a favour, if the land is controlled by the territorial type, if there's an argument with a clan or court, that's when he speaks.

Homeless Above and placeless Below, they drift as they care to.

They come from all over, from Above and Below, within London and without. The only tie between them all is that they are Lost.

* * *

Then someone finds them.

"My name is Sherlock Holmes," he says. "I have a business proposition for you."

Several of the women exchange jaded smirks. Some of them move in front of the children.

"Not that sort," he corrects, looking annoyed.

"Peter," Ash hisses, pinching his arm, his long, straggly blonde hair falling forward to cover the movement.

Peter looks at him, startled. "I'm Rabbit!" He hisses back.

Someone kicks his ankle. "Well, you're Peter now, bloody well _say something!"_

Peter stands, clearing his throat awkwardly. He looks small and stringy next to the Abovegrounder, not much of a leader at all. "What sort of proposition?"

"Information," he says promptly. "You are the eyes and ears of London. You hear everything at some point, and often long before I can. My job places a great deal of value on that sort of knowledge."

_Shades of the Marquis_, mocks one of the rats.

_This one knows the ways of Below,_ another says, _but he doesn't know the Ways._

It's a little relief, in the way that the Thames is a little wet.

"We're not grasses," Peter says instantly, has watched this scene played out a dozens times before with Peter after Peter, Pan after Pan. "If you're a copper, you can just bugger off."

"I'm not a member of the police," Holmes says. "Those idiots. No. I don't want your names, I don't want to call child services or send you to a shelter. I _want_ you to stay where you are, you're no use otherwise. I want you to keep your eyes and ears open and in exchange, I'll give money to the next beggar I see."

"Maybe the next beggar you see'll be working alone."

Holmes looks at them. Raggedy shudders and whispers 'Marquis' under her breath, just low enough for the rats to hear. "I don't think so," he says, like he means something completely different.

(He's definitely an Abovegrounder, but something about the way he looks at them –

No, no, remember those basic mathematics, two and two equalling four and all that. Simplest explanation is that he's knows there's a kind of network, and any Abovegrounder with a little sense could work that out, just from the signs the homeless will leave for others – _vicious dogs nearby, soft-hearted woman lives here, police patrol this route...)_

"Let me know when you decide," he says. "I'm sure you know where I am, or if you don't, consider it a beginner's test."

They watch him leave with a kind of stunned amazement. One by one they turn to Peter, leader as of five minutes ago.

"What are we gonna do then?"

"The Warrior will know."

"The Warrior was an Abovegrounder once."

"'xactly. So he'll know."

* * *

The Marquis de Carabas smiles like a cat, but not one the Rat-Speakers might eat, something tame. The Marquis de Carabas smiles like a panther, like his teeth should be red.

"Well," he says. "What have we here?"

It's Peter's job to speak when nobody else wants to, and the Marquis de Carabas is how he came to be in the first place, after centuries upon centuries never bothering - too many debts among the Lost Boys, too many favours owed and asked for.

(The first was a Pan, earned enough of the Marquis' respect that there is some left over to get them through times when they face him with a Peter instead, better at trickery Above than Below.)

"We're here to see the Warrior," he squeaks.

"The Warrior claims the Labyrinth as his territory by right of conquest," the Marquis says, eyes narrowing, smile still wide, white and gleaming. "All of Below knows that."

"Sure. But he don' _live_ there, does he? All Below knows that too."

"And what need have you for the Warrior of London Below?"

Someone stamps on Nobody's foot before he can blurt out 'none of your business'.

"Want an Abovegrounder's perspective on something," Peter says hastily. That is something the Marquis, for all his skills and tricks, cannot give, and his smile turns cool.

"Want?" He says. "Or need? The value and price are very different things, depending."

"Want." Peter says firmly, for telling Carabas that you _need_ anything is an act of stupidity up there with crossing Knightsbridge alone, walking into Shepherd's Bush, or thinking anything you do can't be seen by the Eye. "We want to know where the Warrior is so we can get his perspective on summat."

"And if I save you perhaps days of fruitless searching?"

"We'll owe a favour," Peter concedes reluctantly. "A _small_ one," he adds quickly.

"A small favour, mm? Well, they do so often grow with time." The panther-smile is back on the Marquis' face. Raggedy shudders and moans softly in terror. Rumour has it she owes the Marquis a very large favour indeed. Has owed it for some five years and counting and still the axe has yet to fall. "Personally, I would look for the Warrior at the Market," the Marquis says, teeth glinting. "And the Market is at Buckingham Palace."

There is a yelp of horror from Ash as it starts to sink in that the Marquis has told them nothing they could not have got from anyone, and for a price far in excess. He has not even guaranteed the Warrior _is_ at the Market, only said that there is a slightly higher chance that he is there, something they could have assumed on their own.

"Good day," the Marquis says, slips into the shadows and vanishes, the buttons of his coat gleaming like the laughter he is not voicing.

* * *

Legend has it the Warrior came from Above, and there is something softer about his face than you would expect the slayer of the Beast to be, but for the most part he is very Below. The minute he hears what information the Marquis gave in exchange, he shakes his head and sighs. "You've been Above too long," he says. (There is something wistful about his smile.)

"He could always owe us one at some point too," Raggedy mutters.

"No," the Warrior says, making a face. "You don't want the Marquis to owe you a favour any more than you want to owe _him_ a favour. Men have been dismembered for less."

"Warrior–" Peter begins.

"Richard," the Warrior says.

Peter exchanges glances with the four that accompanied him Below. "I'm Peter," he says.

The Warrior laughs, and that is when they know it's true he came from Above; there's something in it that has no place Below. "_I'm_ Richard," he corrects. "Richard Mayhew."

"Right," Peter agrees. "Warrior, someone Above has found us."

"And you're the Lost Boys, right?"

"If we're found, we're not Lost," Ash says worriedly, chewing his lower lip.

"He wants us to be spies an' watchers, and if we follow it means we've got a place to belong, and that's even worse," Nobody says.

The Warrior's brow is creased, a look of bemusement as if trying to remember a dream.

(The Warrior has true dreams on occasion, the whispers go.)

"What's his name, this Abovegrounder?"

"Sherlock Holmes," Peter says. "Lives on Montague Street."

"No," the Warrior says quietly, frowning. "Not for very much longer, I think."

Peter looks at his companions, looks at the Warrior's dark eyes. "You know summat?"

"Baker Street Irregulars," the Warrior says softly. Richard, for the thrice-mayor of London. Mayhew, for the surveyor of London Above. No wonder he sometimes has true dreams.

"Some of you might be Found," the Warrior says after a moment, expression clearing. "But the rest aren't. There's a lot of you, aren't there? And you occasionally Find yourselves, don't you? Find a place, decide to owe fealty to a barony or court Below, or make yourselves a home Above."

"He spoke to Peter," Ash insists. "Never had an Abover know Peter as _Peter_."

"You look more like a Wiggins to me," the Warrior says, grinning. "Seriously," he says, grin fading. "He doesn't know Peter as _Peter_. If he's anything like the rest of Above, he hasn't got a clue about the shape of Below."

It's Raggedy who gets it first. "Oh! You mean – we're Found, and if we're Found we're not Lost, so he can't be Peter anyway?"

"Yeah," the Warrior says, looking relieved, almost as if she'd voiced something he hadn't actually grasped. "Something like that, anyway."

"But – if we're not going to be Lost any more, what are we? We still don't have a court or a barony or – anything."

"What did he want from you, again?"

"Wanted little Eyes," Nobody says. "Wanted to know all the movements in the layers Above."

"Go everywhere, see everything, and overhear everyone."

"Yeah."

"Police, is he?"

"Calls them idiots. But he's _something_ like a copper, sniffs around crime scenes like a tracker dog."

"So he wants you to help," the Warrior prods, "but not the regular force."

"Irregulars," no-longer-Peter says, with a note of realisation dawning. "That's a good name."

"Still have rights to the Ways Below with a name like that," Ash says, relieved.

The Warrior watches silently, spear in one hand, empty space for a cat at his feet. "Baker Street Irregulars," he murmurs, like a man trying to recall something read once as a child. The newly-named Irregulars look at him. "Sherlock Holmes. Sort of name that belongs Below, isn't it."

"He's a bit of an Eye himself," Raggedy says. "It's just he can't see Below, that's what he needs us for."

"Take too much notice of something and you see cracks where there were none before," the Warrior says. "Too much curiosity and you'll fall through them."

He smiles like the memory of something soft and fluffy in something that has grown teeth and claws. "And sometimes you follow someone else down."


	10. Pomegranate

**Prompt:** Fuse Sherlock with the Greek Mythology story of your choice!

Which means Hades!Sherlock and Persephone!John to me. Also, Orpheus!Sherlock and Eurydice!John but I have yet to finish that, and probably never will.

And yes, I know it should be Hermes carrying the messages. Couldn't resist.

* * *

**Pomegranate**

"Everything is so dull," Sherlock says.

"You're the lord of the dead," Stamford says. "Your kingdom is rich beyond measure and grows every day, how can you possibly be bored?"

"Gems and shades are equally worthless," Sherlock says dismissively. "Jewels and pretty metals might buy mortal delights, but I am not mortal. And as for the shades - every single one of them has the same story: I had a life, and now it is ended."

"You want entertainment then? Perhaps a living guest?"

"Who, exactly," Sherlock says dryly, "would want to be a guest and room in the kingdom of the dead?"

He should have known better than to pose such a question to Stamford.

Stamford, who frequently introduces individuals with a point and parts them without, Stamford brings him John.

* * *

John brings laughter to the realm of the dead.

He tries to stifle his amusement at first, says things like: "This is the court of judgement, we can't laugh here."

Sherlock says, "This is my kingdom where only the truth may be spoken, for it's only here that it's wanted. And what could be more true than laughter?"

"I shouldn't laugh," John says, mouth struggling to stay still as they watch Sisyphus, making his way up the hill, inch by inch. "I mean, it's not funny."

"It is," Sherlock says as the stone rolls back yet again, and like his word is a key, John lets his laughter go.

* * *

Time passes, above as well as below.

* * *

"I don't want a throne," John says.

"I want people to respect you," Sherlock says.

"I'm a guest," John says, frowning and Sherlock curses for the first time the fear and revulsion others hold him in, for he does not know where he has gone wrong, how he has not made his meaning plain.

(He remembers at last that a single arrow cannot strike two breasts.)

"I want them to see how I value you and know to value you the same," he says awkwardly, for he is rich in gold and jewels and not in words.

"Well," John says, "that's – nice. But I'm not, you know. Anything special."

"I can know the shape of a man's life in a glance," Sherlock says. "I think I know your worth."

"I'm not gold for you to keep," John says.

"I didn't say you were," Sherlock says. "I am known to be just, too, John."

"So if I wanted to leave, you'd let me?"

"Do you want to leave?" Sherlock says, heart cold in his chest.

"Not yet."

Not _yet._

* * *

He expects there to be a messenger eventually – Mycroft cannot keep himself from meddling.

It is Anthea who comes, grey-eyed Anthea, sprung full-formed from Mycroft's head.

Perhaps Mycroft knows he is slightly more likely to hear out and listen to something that might be wisdom rather than something that is undoubtedly trickery.

(Of _course _Mycroft knows.)

"John's sister wants him back," she says without preamble. "She scours the earth with her fury; it bakes with her rage."

"Why should such temper matter to me?" Sherlock says. "All come to my kingdom in the end anyway."

"It might not matter to you," Anthea says. "But it matters to your brother that the world isn't destroyed because you had to abduct some company."

"He's one to talk," Sherlock snaps.

"The world is more important than a dalliance."

"He means 'the world is more important than _your _dalliance'."

"Regardless, it _is _important."

"It doesn't matter to Mycroft," he hisses. "To him all beings are nothing more than stones on a petteia board. Well, he may think all the world and everything on it is a game piece for him to move, but it's not. Or if it is, then this _one_ piece is mine and he _can't have him_. I value John more than he ever will. Hasn't he always wanted that of me? To have a heart he can manipulate?"

Gently Anthea says, "One – or even two hearts is nothing to the Moirae. They sever the threads just the same."

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Sherlock snaps. "This is my kingdom, where all threads end – I am not the same as them."

"All beings are in the weave," Anthea says. "Even Mycroft. Even you."

"Go back to Mycroft," Sherlock says. "Tell him to find Harry a replacement brother. And if he claims he can't, tell him: '_exactly_'."

* * *

John says, "I'm forgetting what sunlight felt like."

Sherlock wants to say: _"I won't change for you._

_"At least, I don't think I will. I don't think I have, because you can tell when I try. But the loss of you – John, why is the thought so abhorrent, simply going back to what my life was before you? It would leave me hollow._

_"No, worse. It would leave me aware of my hollowness._

_"I would – I would do anything for you. And if it made you happier to leave I would –_

_"I would let you go._

_"I'm told that's love. Is that enough to keep you?"_

He thinks the answer is no.

* * *

Sherlock says, "Stay with me," passes John a pomegranate seed from mouth to mouth.

John smiles, kisses back with a new seed on his tongue.

* * *

"'Brother'," Anthea recites, "'Yours is a kingdom made entirely of discarded petteia stones. Surely you can play your games without the use of one still in play?'" She looks him, cold and terrible on his throne. "To be fair, he has not spoken with you since John entered your kingdom."

"You're supposed to be wise," Sherlock says through his teeth. "What's _your _argument to make me drop my 'queen'."

"John is a creature of sunlight," she says. "You can't keep him in the dark."

"He likes walking in the shadows with me," Sherlock says.

"I'm sure he does," Anthea says. "Every being likes shade after too long in the sun. That doesn't mean they want to stay there and never know the sun again."

"Go back to Mycroft. Tell him whatever you want, but make sure he knows that if he tries to take John from me I'll close my gates. Let's see the value he puts on any of his pieces then."

* * *

John says, "Love brings more people to your kingdom than despair ever will." His words are layered upon themselves, too many meanings for one sentence.

(_Has it brought you? _Sherlock does not dare to say.)

"Stay with me," Sherlock says, pomegranate seed contained in his kiss.

("Yes," John says, licks red juice from his lips.)

* * *

"There's a lot of people on the shore," John says.

"There's a famine above," Sherlock says. Admits: "Your sister isn't best pleased with your living arrangements."

"Always was a bit dramatic, Harry," John says wryly.

"You don't – want to leave?"

"I'm happy where I am," John says.

"Don't leave me," Sherlock breathes, nothing but hope in his mouth.

John shakes his head. "I have to," he says. Looks at the people wandering the shore, being ferried across the Styx.

(Hope tastes like ash.)

"I'll come back," John says, promises.

"You won't," Sherlock says bitterly. "How exactly can the realm of the dead hope to compare to the living?"

"Oh, I don't know," John says mildly. "The pomegranates here are the best in any realm."

In his open palm –

_one two three_

"It's always been my choice," he says.

(promises taste like pomegranate)


	11. Ducks! & When Jim Met Seb

**Prompt: **Sherlock, John and Sarah as ducks. They're a little family group. Sarah is going to have the ducklings, John's going to make sure she's alright as the proud father and Sherlock's going to stand guard, protect them and help raise the little ones because someone's going to have to teach the little ducklings the proper way of the world.

I would like John and Sherlock arguing about where's the best place to nest, John fussing over Sarah, Sherlock cracking angrily at anyone who comes too close, and the baby ducklings adoring Uncle Sherlock who teaches them how to spot the humans most likely to have bread.

(The Good Omens crossover was so much easier than trying to write a Watership Down for ducks, and my titling continues to suck.)

* * *

**Ducks!**

"I know this may surprise you," Crowley said, "but there _are _parks other than St James's."

"I know, Crowley," Aziraphale said patiently.

"Well? Come on, let's go. Surely we've fed enough ducks by now."

"Oh, but you haven't seen John and Sarah yet! They'll be bringing their ducklings today!"

"You _named _the ducks?" Crowley said incredulously. He answered his own question, shaking his head. "...Of course you named the ducks."

"I want to have their favourites ready for them," Aziraphale said firmly, easily ignoring Crowley. "It's a big moment in a duck's life, the first time they bring their ducklings to the water. Now, John prefers the soggy Hovis with Marmite-"

"Ah, loyal to the service, eh?" Crowley said mildly. He gave the bread he'd been expecting to throw a disappointed look. It obediently changed brands.

"–whereas Sarah is the more discerning sort. And Sherlock is uncanny at knowing who has freshly baked bread."

"Well he would be, name like Sherlock," Crowley said, nodding along indulgently. Then he ran through a little mental calculation in his head. "Hang on. That's three ducks. You only need two ducks for ducklings. That's normally how it works."

"Sherlock and John work as a pair," Aziraphale explained. "If she wanted ducklings with John, Sarah had to put up with Sherlock. It looked like she'd be frightened off for a while, but it all worked out nicely in the end."

Crowley shook his head in disbelief. "Only you, Aziraphale. Only you could somehow find and adopt a _ménage à trois_ of _ducks_."

"Love is beautiful in all its forms," Aziraphale said serenely. "But Sherlock isn't interested in breeding, so _ménage à trois _is technically incorrect."

"You have a gay duck named Sherlock. Partnered with a duck named John. I don't know if I should laugh or cry." Crowley did neither, of course. He was, after all, English by naturalisation and demon by nature. He thought about blessing himself for the question he was about to ask. "...Why isn't Sarah called Mary, then?"

"My dear, you don't expect _ducks _to know narrative convention, do you?"

Crowley opened his mouth to say _something_, realised there were no words, and closed it again.

"Besides, she was named Sarah long before she met Sherlock and John," Aziraphale continued blithely, "I couldn't possibly change her name just because it doesn't hold true to Arthur's stories."

"Of course not," Crowley agreed. "Whatever was I thinking?"

"I don't know," Aziraphale said, sarcasm sliding off him easier than water off the proverbial duck. "But you can help name the ducklings, if you like."

Crowley thought about saying how naming ducklings was just one of those many, many things demons simply didn't _do_, up there with helping old grannies across a road or paying for anything, or, or, _healing bicycles –_ and then he thought about just what Aziraphale was likely to name the poor things. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the slightly hopeful expression on Aziraphale's face. "Sure," he said. "OK."

Aziraphale beamed at him. "Wonderful!"

Crowley's slouch approached terminal embarrassment, gave it a nod and proceeded into 'let's find a deep hole and hide'.

He was momentarily saved when a mother duck appeared leading a string of ducklings, two drakes apparently guarding the rear.

"One, two, three," Crowley muttered, "– stop _moving about_ – three, four, no, _that's _four, five –"

"Nine," Aziraphale said delightedly. "Oh, aren't they _sweet_?"

Crowley hoped Aziraphale didn't expect an answer from him, there was only so low he could sink before his pride retaliated with things traditionalist demons would look askance at. "This _is _the famous threesome we've been waiting for, then?"

"Of course it is," Aziraphale said. "Look at Sherlock, that one there, he's working out if we have bread worth approaching for."

Crowley stared. The duck named Sherlock paused momentarily in his scan of the surroundings and stared back intently. A battle of wills commenced.

"And, of course, the smaller fellow is John, he got the limp trying to take on one of the pelicans over a nesting site. Golem, I think. Terrible business. "

Crowley tore his eyes away from Sherlock's, inadvertently losing the battle. "One of the _pelicans_?" he said, impressed despite himself. "I've seen one of them eat a pigeon."

"I know," Aziraphale said. "I was there when you goaded it to do so."

"I didn't have to goad it into anything," Crowley protested. "These new ones, they're still Russian to the core."

"They've been here forty years now, Crowley."

"Four years, forty years," Crowley said, waving a hand dismissively, "what's the difference? I still can't believe I managed to get someone to go to Moscow to ask for new pelicans at the height of the Cold War. Could have got them from anywhere, but no, if the originals came from Russia, replacements have got to come from Russia. I mean, honestly, _why_? ...Don't even _think _of saying 'ineffable', angel."

"I was going to say that the answer to your query was 'Englishness'." Aziraphale said. "John got the nesting site, in case you were wondering."

Crowley stared at him. He looked at the unassuming duck, watching the milling ducklings with what appeared to be longsuffering patience. "He took on the Golem over a nesting site and _won_? You've got to be kidding me."

"Well, he had help, of course."

"Of course. _Look at him! _The Golem's three times his size, he could probably swallow that little ball of feathers whole!"

"They might not have a clue about narrative convention, but apparently they know tactics," Aziraphale said. He sounded a little disappointed in their priorities.

Crowley watched one of the ducklings nip at their 'Uncle' Sherlock's tail feathers. "I'm naming that one Moriarty," he said. "He'll grow up obsessed with trying to better Uncle Sherlock, it'll be better than a Greek tragedy."

"There's already a Moriarty, dear," Aziraphale said, obviously trying to break the news gently. He paused. "Well, there _was_," he corrected. "He threatened Sarah at some point in the courting stages, John went to Sherlock and, well, there was a weir involved."

"You've brought me a _murderous threesome of ducks_," Crowley said, delight in every syllable. "It's like you've known me for six thousand years or something." He looked again at the duckling, waddling along behind Sherlock, imitating everything the elder duck did. "Fine, he can be Jim," he said at last. "But if anyone asks, _you _named him."

"Of course, my dear," Aziraphale said, amused. "That one there, about to fall in the water, I think I'll name her Violet."

"Cruel. She'll never live up to a name like that. I like it."

"_Quack._"

Crowley looked down and into the belligerent stare of Sherlock the duck, surrounded by beady-eyed ducklings. The one Aziraphale had just named realised it was alone on the bank, looked around and waddled in their direction. "Erk, " Crowley said, which was probably slightly less embarrassing than what he might have otherwise said, something involving ninjas and ducks and how they shouldn't mix, unlike ducks and threesomes and murderous inclinations.

"_Quack,_" Sherlock repeated imperiously.

Very slowly and carefully, Crowley reached down and shredded some bread for him. Beside him, Aziraphale smothered something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh at Crowley's expense.

Sherlock studied the bread offered. He looked at it intently for a minute, nibbled a corner, and considered.

Crowley was appalled to discover that he was actually quite nervous about the verdict.

Sherlock lunged for the bag at Crowley's feet, grabbed a slice of bread and ran towards the waiting Sarah and John, followed by a noisy stream of ducklings.

"Unbelievable," Crowley said, staring. "That ungrateful little bastard."

"Don't be mean, Crowley, he's just showing off the bread."

The duck did indeed appear to be showing off the stolen slice of bread, cajoling the other two adults into eating before any of them would let the ducklings try.

"...is he _lecturing _them?" Crowley said incredulously after a moment.

They watched as he proceeded to lead the ducklings around, occasionally deigning to accept bread, more often ignoring people's overtures.

"He _is_!"

"I knew I made the right choice naming him Sherlock," Aziraphale murmured. "Mind you, I did have evidence from his mother's previous clutch regarding his potential intelligence – Mycroft has grown quite round with his ability to discern who has the best bread."

"...Is Mycroft that one duck that rolls instead of walks?"

"How did you guess?"

"...Never mind," Crowley said, watching as Sherlock herded the ducklings away from a clearly substandard piece of baking that had been thrown in their midst. Jim would have eaten it anyway, Crowley suspected, but apparently something from Tesco just wasn't good enough for John and Sarah's ducklings as far as Sherlock was concerned.

"...We're going to be coming back often, aren't we?" He said at last.

Aziraphale looked over from where he was carefully shredding bread for John and Sarah and smiled. "If you like," he said carefully.

Crowley's mouth twitched as Sherlock led the ducklings over and demanded more bread from him with an arrogant quack. "You think I'm going to miss how little Jim turns out? Not a chance. I'll have made a little psycho-duck out of him before the year's end."

"Whatever you say, Crowley," Aziraphale said indulgently.

"I will!" Crowley insisted. "I'll find him a Sebastian too, and together they'll take over the park!"

"Ah," Aziraphale countered, "Then I'll help Sherlock and John marshal together a flock of Scotland Yarders. There's already a Lestrade and a Gregson."

"You said it yourself, they've got no idea they're meant to lose!"

"They also have no idea they're not supposed to be able to judge who has the best bread, and yet they do anyway."

"Spoilsport," Crowley said, grinning as he gave Jim a piece of bread too large for him and prompted an all-out war among the ducklings. He looked at Sherlock, watching him suspiciously, and then at John and Sarah, neatening each other's feathers. "We'll be here every afternoon, try not to miss out," he informed the duck cheerfully.

"Really, my dear," Aziraphale murmured, but didn't argue. He passed the last of the bread to Sarah and stood up. "Come along, Crowley, isn't it time for you to wander to and fro?"

"Ducks are much more difficult to influence than people," Crowley informed him, tossing the last piece of bread to the duckling he was pretty sure was a Stanley. "I need a break. How about lunch?"

* * *

**When Jim Met Seb**

"Right-o," said Anthony Crowley. "Pay attention now, Jimmy."

'Jimmy' paid very close attention to the bag of bread at Crowley's feet.

"No," Crowley said firmly. "Not the bread, Jim." He snapped his fingers. The bread vanished, and Jimmy's attention with it. Crowley scowled, and picked up the half-grown duckling at his feet, shoving it towards the inattentive Jim. "This is Sebastian, alright? _Sebastian_." Jim gave the duckling in Crowley's hands a look, and then went back to trying to work out where the bread had gone.

"Crowley!"

Crowley blessed under his breath at the sound of Aziraphale's scandalised voice. "Do you _mind? _I'm trying to orchestrate a legendary partnership here!"

"Crowley, did you _steal _that duckling?"

"It wandered away from its flock, I adopted it!"

"Put it right back where it came from! _Really_, Crowley!"

"Aziraph-"

"_Crowley_," Aziraphale warned.

Crowley looked again at the duckling in his hands. Now that he thought about it, was it _really _worthy of being the right-hand – er, wing – duck of his psychotic little mastermind? Was it even a proper Sebastian? The way it was attempting to chew its feet made it look like a generic minion. Sighing, Crowley flung the duck away.

"Crowley!" Aziraphale yelped, horrified.

"It landed in the water!" Crowley protested. "See? It's bobbing around like a cork, no need to worry."

"The poor thing could have been seriously hurt!"

"But it _wasn't_," Crowley insisted. "Jim thought it was funny," he added, a trace of sulkiness in his voice.

"Jim is a duckling. A duckling you have been rewarding with manna every time he pecks some poor human on the ankle."

Crowley absolutely did not blush. "You've got to start training 'em young," he muttered, avoiding Aziraphale's stare. "Anyway," he brightened, "you've got to make it up to me now and help me find a new Sebastian, since I lost the other one because of you."

"You lost the other one because you just threw it in the pond," Aziraphale said firmly. "And besides - you can't _force _these things, Crowley."

"And you had nothing to do with Sherlock and John getting together, I'm sure," Crowley scowled. "You can't fool me – I know your 'total coincidence, nothing divine going on here' intervention when I see it."

"A nudge here and there doesn't count," Aziraphale sniffed.

"It totally counts!" Crowley protested. "Anyway, if you're not going to help, go entertain Sherlock so I can go off and st-_acquire _another duckling without him going Batman on me again."

"Batman, Crowley?" Aziraphale sniggered. "Really?"

"Some other non-powered vigilante, then," Crowley snapped, "just make sure he doesn't do it. Those beaks _hurt_."

"Oh, my poor dear," Aziraphale crooned. He was completely unsympathetic, Crowley felt, to his terrible plight. He pulled out his ace:

"I'll buy cream buns. Two of them, just for you."

Aziraphale froze.

"Soft, light pastry," Crowley said, gently cajoling. "A lake or two of rich, thick cream, and juuuust the right amount of strawberry jam..."

"You old serpent," Aziraphale said, in the tone of someone faced with temptation and enjoying every second of it.

"All I ask is that Sherlock get a little more attention," Crowley said, careful to keep the triumph out of his voice. "Is that so terrible? In exchange for cream buns?"

"Stealing a duckling, though," Aziraphale said, wavering.

"Getting Jimmy a playmate," Crowley countered. "Think of the ducklings, Aziraphale, the poor lonely ducklings."

"Well, he wouldn't _be _lonely if you hadn't taught him to try and eat his siblings," Aziraphale said disapprovingly.

"Who cares about mild cannibalistic tendencies when there are cream buns involved? _Cream buns_, angel."

"Oh, very well," Aziraphale sighed. "I'll want some proper Danish pastries as well, though. From Denmark."

"Where else would they be from?" Crowley said, baffled, then hurriedly continued before Aziraphale could change his mind. "You'll distract Sherlock for me, then?"

"Of course," the angel said, waving a hand. "Best be quick about it, though. If he catches on, I'm not going to step in for you. It's not covered in the Arrangement."

"Coward," Crowley muttered under his breath.

"Pragmatist," Aziraphale retorted. "Go arrange your play date, Crowley."

"It's not a _play date_," Crowley protested, mock-scandalised. "It's a meeting of destiny! A fated partnership! Legend in duck form!"

Aziraphale's supremely unimpressed look brought back fond memories of Vikings fleeing en masse from a monastery they'd been attempting to pillage. Crowley did the sensible thing and headed towards Molly and her offspring at a speed just a little too fast to be classified as 'walking'.

Jim followed at a more sedate pace because Crowley had yet to teach him the error of his ways in underestimating a fashion-challenged book-loving angel.

"Well, then," Crowley said, clapping his hands together with a look of glee. "Which one of you is a Sebastian? Any ideas, Jim?"

Jim looked at him, and then pointedly looked at his feet, where, as far as the duck was concerned, a bag of bread should always be.

"Fine," Crowley said, exasperated. "_I'll _find him."

He looked back at the ducklings, deliberately casual. (Molly was not quite as terrifying as Sherlock – he could call in reinforcements – but there was a reason Crowley hadn't tried to find a Sebastian among her ducklings before.)

"You - no, you're definitely a Vivi... you're a Jabez... Mary... Percy..."

Jim wandered over to one of the ducklings closest to the water and engaged it in conversation.

"...James... found a friend, Jim? ...Mary... wait a moment..."

Jim and the new duckling looked at him. Crowley peered at them. They stared back, unimpressed even when he removed his sunglasses. Normally Crowley would take that as a sign of stupidity, but Jim was a vicious little bugger, and his new companion looked like a regular little Woundwort.

"Sebastian!" Crowley said delightedly.

Newly-named Sebastian continued to be unimpressed.

"I can tell this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful partnership," Crowley told them both, scooping them up in his arms and running away as fast as possible, hoping to have a head start before Molly noticed.

"Aziraphale," he crowed, skidding to a halt beside the bemused angel. "Aziraphale, look, I got him, I found Seb–"

It was at that moment Sherlock attacked and he hit the ground in a hail of feathers and raucous quacking.

"You really shouldn't have announced the successful stealing of a duckling in front of him," Aziraphale said pityingly. "Honestly, Crowley."

"Little help?" Crowley called from somewhere beneath the enraged duck.

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap," the angel said piously. "But... there is going to be a book auction in Glasgow soon..."

Crowley might have said something, if he weren't on the receiving end of new knowledge that a swan's wings were hardly the only type that hurt if they hit you in the face.

"First editions, and of course, it would go against the Arrangement if I were to go to Glasgow..."

"Fine!" Crowley managed to yelp. "Fine! Just–" Whatever he would have said next was obscured by John joining the fray on the general (and sensible) principle that if Sherlock was going to attack someone five times his size he shouldn't do it alone and probably needed help.

Aziraphale watched a little longer. Just to be sure he could separate them safely, of course.


	12. Demon Summoning For Fun And Profit

**Prompt:** moriarty and crowley are bffs

* * *

The first time Crowley was summoned by Jim Moriarty (age six and a half) he was not impressed.

"Look," he explained, "you've mixed up the sigils here and here, and these runes cancel each other out, you're not going to keep anything in a circle like that. See?" He crossed the circle, taking care to step on the wavering lines and smudge them as he passed. "And the crossroads? Completely unnecessary. Nice try, though."

Jim did something complicated with his mouth that was possibly – probably – most definitely a pout. "Didn't want you anyway," he sulked. "Wanted Aleister Crowley."

Crowley sputtered. "That second-rate magician? He didn't have a single idea I didn't give him."

"Go away unless you're going to give me a pony," Jim said.

"Fine!" Crowley snapped. "Kids these days," he muttered, and instantly reappeared in a bookshop in Soho, prepared to forget about the whole thing.

* * *

"Somebody's sake, not you again!"

Jim grinned broadly, showing two missing front teeth. "Well? Did I get the runes right this time?"

Crowley scowled at his feet. "Yeah," he admitted grudgingly after a moment. "But if you're still trying for that hack, you're going about it all wrong, this is specifically a demon summoning circle."

"I didn't _really _want to talk to Aleister Crowley," Jim said, waving a hand. "Pft. Dead occultist or genuine demon? Come _on_. I was just disappointed. I mean, you don't look very demonic."

"Let me guess," Crowley sighed. "You were expecting tails, horns... _pitchforks_?"

"At least a whiff of sulphur," Jim said, apparently completely unashamed that his love of cliché was showing. Well, he _was_ eight, Crowley supposed, he could probably let it go this once. Surely he'd learn. "Maybe black eyes like a shark? Nice and creepy."

"Sure," Crowley drawled. "And maybe I'll disappear in a puff of smoke if you use the right Latin."

"Really?"

Crowley rolled his eyes - not that the expression was visible, hidden behind sunglasses, but it was the principle of the thing. He'd say Hollywood had a lot to explain, but since he'd been responsible in the first place... "_No_," he said. "Sorry to disappoint." He stepped out of the circle with a sigh. "I hope you've at least got wine this time?"

"I thought you said I got the runes right?" Jim demanded.

"You did," Crowley shrugged. "But your circles still need work." He grinned at Jim's annoyed look. "I'm hardly going to tell you how to keep me here, am I? You're annoying enough just summoning me every six months or so. At least you're not bothering with crossroads any more. So," he flung himself into the nearest seat. "What have you been up to?"

* * *

"Look, Jim, I like you and everything, you're a nasty little chap, but if you keep summoning me when I'm in the shower, I'm getting a restraining order. I'm warning you – I've got my pick of lawyers."

"Sorry," Jim drawled. He didn't look very sorry at all.

Crowley scowled and conjured up a suit. "Bloody teenage hormones."

* * *

"I'm just saying," Crowley said, "criminal mastermind might not have been the right thing to tell your careers advice counsellor. I applaud your ambition, of course, but-"

Fine," Jim snapped. "I'll just get rid of the problem myself shall I?"

"Let's not be _hasty_," Crowley said quickly, "There's plenty of evil careers advice counsellors can do, crushing of dreams and all that. I tell you what, I'll remove all memory of the incident, and you practise your lying so that the next time someone asks you if you're joking, they'll believe you when you say yes, okay?"

"Sure," Jim said brightly.

Crowley had a sneaking suspicion he'd been played.

* * *

"Are you even allowed to be in here?" Crowley said as he sauntered up to the bar, waving a hand at the surrounding pub.

"Sorry to disappoint, but yes." Jim said. "I'm at university now, Crowley – I'm supposed to live here."

"Oh," Crowley said. "Well, mine's a bourbon, I get the feeling I'm going to need it. I usually do after five minutes with you."

"You love me really," Jim said, smirking.

"You're good for a laugh," Crowley said idly, keeping an eye on the pavement outside – and how many passers-by tried to pick up the coins he'd glued there. "Come on, how's the criminal empire coming along? I hope you're better at that than you are at demon summoning."

"You keep coming when I call, don't you?"

"True. And now you can buy me drinks." He raised his glass in salute. "It all works out in the end."

* * *

"Crowley, I've met the love of my life!"

"How did you get this number?"

"His name's Sherlock Holmes, he's a consulting detective – it's the exact opposite of me, isn't that wonderful? – and he's sooo smart and-"

"It's three fucking a.m."

"Crowley, what do I do? How can I make him like me?" The 'without drugs or Stockholm Syndrome' went unsaid.

Crowley thought about giving terrible advice before remembering there was nothing he could think of that Jim wouldn't do on his own, and worse.

"Mn. Okay, look, first things first: no explosives. Second: _no _explosives. Most people are put off, alright, no matter what you think. Strangers are okay, love interests – not so much. Find something in common. Dress smart. Conceal the crazy until it's too late. And finally: call me at this time in the morning again and I will strand you on the M25. I'm serious."

"See you at the Rose and Crown?"

Criminal mastermind or not, Crowley reflected, Jim could do an absolutely astonishing imitation of a hopeful puppy, guaranteed to melt the unwary into a puddle of helpless goo. That he could repeat the feat _o__ver the phone_ was surely a talent worthy of positive reinforcement.

"Sure, whatever."


	13. Three Ways To Gain A Heart

**Prompt:** John has a collection of hearts he's won and stolen. He doesn't treasure them at all.

When he discovers them, Sherlock is terrified that John intends for his to join the pile.

* * *

**Three Ways To Gain A Heart**

John keeps his collection of hearts piled up in a corner of his room, collecting dust.

They don't look like hearts, of course. They can look like anything, like a stuffed bear that John won for his first girlfriend at a carnival, like the theme music of a show he used to watch every Saturday with his sister, even if they were fighting at the time, like a bottle of perfume or a favourite drink or a particular scented lip balm - but every one of them is someone's heart.

He studies them, tries to form a picture of their previous owners. He stops because the dust, the dents, the careless way they are tossed aside makes something twist low in his gut.

"I'm not going to join your collection," he tells John at breakfast, half-suspecting himself of lying.

John looks at him, blinks disingenuously. "That's what you've been so worried about? They're just hearts, Sherlock. People give them away all the time."

"Not me," Sherlock says.

"Not you," John agrees. "That's okay. There's three ways to gain someone's heart. One of them is bound to work."

"Oh?" Sherlock says (touches his chest to make sure his is still there).

"Mm," John says. "You can lose a heart -"

"Careless," Sherlock says, tries to make his words light like air.

"Not really," John says, shrugging. "It's hard to keep hold of, you know, it slips through your fingers when you least expect it and falls into someone else's hands. That's the first way: someone loses their heart to you."

"Not me," Sherlock repeats. "I would never be so careless."

"Right," John says, nodding. "I'm never quite sure what to do with that sort, anyway. I mean, I get how hard it is to hold on to, but still, anybody could have caught it, in the right time, the right place. It doesn't _mean_ anything. What if I didn't even want it?"

"You should give it back, then."

"It doesn't work like that," John says patiently.

"Why not?"

"It just doesn't," John says, a statement of fact that everyone should know - grass is green, sky is blue, Bank Holidays are wet and miserable, you can't give someone their heart back. "You've got to _take_ your heart back. That's the way it works." He spreads jam very evenly on his toast as he thinks, says lowly, "It's... difficult, and most people leave a little of their heart behind even when they do."

"I don't understand," Sherlock says.

"Didn't think you would," John says. "I bet you'd erase every sign that anyone else had ever held yours."

Sherlock's hand curls against his chest, tight against his sternum, heartbeat steady against his fingers.

"The second way," John says, "is to give your heart to someone. Always fraught with risk, that. Even worse than just losing it, because you've done it deliberately."

His eyes linger on something behind Sherlock, but when Sherlock turns and looks, all he sees is John's abandoned cane, leaning against the wall.

"And third... third - you have your heart stolen."

"And are you good at stealing hearts?" Sherlock says, though he's pretty sure he already knows the answer.

"Very good," John responds promptly, without a trace of smugness. "It's okay, though, I won't steal yours."

"Maybe you won't _mean_ to," Sherlock says dubiously, meaning _but you will all the same._

John shakes his head. "No. When you _want _someone's heart, I mean, really, truly want it, you want them to give it to you, you know, as part of a proper exchange."

Sherlock's hand stays pressed against his chest. For all John's talk about how he wouldn't steal Sherlock's, he's not sure John wouldn't take his heart accidentally, just being _John_. "In exchange for what."

John blinks at him, eyes wide with surprise. "Your own, of course."

He looks at his cane again, then back at Sherlock's face. "It's okay," he says gently. "I mean, you've already got mine. I can wait."


	14. bee to the blossom

**Prompt:** John is actually a bee who turned himself human. NO IT MAKES SENSE I SWEAR

So Johnbee is all buzzing around and making honey and stuff and then he's like, "Wow my owner looks kind of sad why does he look sad can I cheer him up :3," and then he like, wishes himself human and then he shows up with a stripey jumper and is all like, "Hi Sherlock I am here to bee your friend."

okay no it actually doesn't make sense at all

(Look, someone else got there first with the true crack fill, okay! Argh, _dammit meme_.)

* * *

**bee to the blossom**

The virgin Queen flies in summer. The drones congregate, watch and wait, and one warm afternoon (twenty degrees or warmer) she flies and they follow.

One drone does not. He watches the Beekeeper watching them, muttering under his breath, making scentless dance marks on a piece of flattened wood pulp. He smells alone, and there is nothing more abhorrent to a bee.

The drone flies to him and tells him the distance and quickest route to the nearest high-yield flowerbed. Obviously the Beekeeper has lost his way and can't find his hive, but there's a good chance at least some will be among the flowers.

"Not interested in flying?" The Beekeeper says. "I wouldn't be if I were you: succeed and you die, fail and you live until Autumn - when you're killed by the workers."

The drone repeats himself with a little exasperation. Humans. Sometimes they seem so unaware of such basic things: the time of day, the exact distance between obstacles, the most efficient route to what they want.

The Beekeeper watches, scrawls a rudimentary copy of the dance on his wood pulp. "I'm sure it's a very nice patch of flowers," he says after a moment of frowning contemplation. "But it's not for me."

The alone scent gets stronger with his words, and the drone wonders, considers why such good information would make him worse. Perhaps he knows he won't find his hive there, perhaps he is certain because his hive swarmed and he was left behind. Perhaps the winter (the drone has never seen one, never will, and yet he knows it, the same way he can calculate the position of sun in the sky on the opposite side of the Earth) killed them, perhaps illness. Perhaps the flowers died.

The beekeeper watches the swarm, and the drone thinks.

* * *

In the two months since the drone has left his cell, the Beekeeper has never brought a companion with him, never acknowledged the need for one. The drone finds this a terrible thing. Nearly half his adult lifetime has passed, and the Beekeeper remains solitary. It is unthinkable. Humans have more time (the old Queen remembers the keeper, and she has reached the near unimaginable age of three summers) but the drone does not, and with the immediacy of something that will not live long, he wants to see the Beekeeper happy _now_.

The problem is that the Beekeeper does not seem to realise he is lonely, and makes himself more alone every time he tries to communicate with others of his kind. Human dances, the drone decides, are unnecessarily complex, and his human just a bit hopeless.

Attempting to communicate is an exercise in folly given that they speak two very different languages, and have very different cultures. One of them is going to have to change.

* * *

He was right about the problem being language, the drone decides. Humans don't know pheromones when they scent them, and have seemingly decided to give up the knowledge of how to read the body in favour of a language consisting primarily of sounds; no wonder the Beekeeper is constantly misstepping.

That's okay though, because he can dance for the both of them.

* * *

"Why do you stay, John?"

John blinks, still a little unused to way he has to say something obvious when he thought his body did it for him. "Because I like you."

Sherlock makes an exasperated noise, as if the thought is unbelievable. "You could have gone anywhere, done anything - why did you come here?" His body adds 'to me?'

John says at last the first words he said the moment he acquired his new body, the ones he practised constantly to be sure he had them right, the ones more important than what he chose as his name. He says: "I'm here to be your friend."


	15. Lament

So it turns out I did finish that Orpheus!Sherlock and Eurydice!John story after all. I think this one goes to chibiaries for that.

* * *

**Lament**

Say it: John is dead.

Repeat (hope it gets through): _John_ is dead. John is _dead_.

Not possible. _Not possible._

(Whatever remains, however improbable)

Then. Since it is not possible that John is dead (though he is, perhaps you should amend that – it is not possible that John can _remain_ dead, permanently parted from you) what can you do to correct this state of affairs?

You turn your back on Lestrade, on cases, on your brother; turn your back and try to think.

* * *

You dream of John on the third night.

You say, "If this is all I will have for the rest of my life, I can be content with that."

John says the truth he would once have couched in niceties to save your feelings, though you told him often you had none – "No you won't."

You always said the day John knew the truth before you would herald the end of your world.

* * *

"You can't go on like this, Sherlock!"

"I worry about you."

"Freak – there's been a murder, a weird one, nasty – don't you want to see?"

"You know John wouldn't – he wouldn't want this for you. He wouldn't like to see you like this."

You hear them through a haze, their voices so distant, as if they are the ones speaking from another country, not John, waiting patiently for your dreams.

You may have lived with John, but you existed before him, and you will exist after him. You keep telling yourself that with every breath, hoping that repetition will make it truth.

(You've heard this song before: this can't be happening to me, not me, things like this happen to other people, not me – for _me_ he will come home, it will all have been a dream, a nightmare, because _I'm_ different, therefore he's different – such things do not happen to us.

_Before_, you always said: oh, stop being stupid and face the facts.)

It is like an equation that you cannot work out – you know every step, the result is always correct, for you double-check at every stage, and yet you wish it wasn't. It isn't supposed to work like that – _you_ are not supposed to work like that. Grief has made a mockery of your pride – you see so clear now: you are like everybody else before Death.

* * *

"I'm dreaming," you say.

"Yes," John tells you. His smile – is it exactly as you remember it? John had so many for you, perhaps it is simply a new one he has learnt.

"I don't want to wake up," you confess.

"You will," John says, bluntly truthful. You remember you trusted him to tell you what lines you were crossing, what morals you trod upon. This is the same, isn't it, this honesty, so terrible and sharp like a knife between your ribs.

You turn your head and meet his eyes for the first time and they are – you look at them straight on and they are colourless. Not white: the total absence of colour. Your breath catches in your throat.

"Sherlock?" Not-John says. "What's wrong?"

* * *

You wake and think of John's eyes. You cannot recall their colour. You say, _blue, brown_? Pathetic, you could once name the exact shades a painter would use. You say, _something light._ and mean, _they shone when the light hit them just right, they were clear and steady and he looked right at me and he saw something worth praising and something worth thought, and he didn't look away when he found himself looking at blood and shadows._

You say, _why can't I remember?_

You say, "Oh. Oh, I am forgetting John."

(You existed before him and you will exist after him and this is how: by letting time take him from you, by letting it blur and erase every memory that cuts you open, and the blunting of your grief is the fog of your new life, seeping through you, remaking you.)

You pace the confines of the flat. (When did it become a cage instead of a home?)

There, John's laptop, a fine film of dust between the keys – _over_ the keys now. John's favourite mug, sitting by the sink, unwashed, the last few drops of cold tea now a sticky patina across the bottom. John's chair, out of alignment from where he'd shoved it back in his haste to get up and follow you, John everywhere, in everything, but never to come through the door again, never to laugh or smile or fling cushions at your sulking back, never again to make tea or throw out body parts or change everything (the flat, your world) just by walking in.

Remember: the way he said 'that's amazing', the way it filled you with heat, you who had been cold almost all your life – pride and something tender that made you smile with a wonder you could feel in the uncertain lift of your mouth.

Remember: the feel of his hand in yours, calluses and lifelines, warm and solid, fingers curling against yours _every time you fall, don't worry, i'll be there to pick you back up, promise, just – try not to fall so much, yeah?_

Remember: John. John's smile, John's exasperated frown, John's laugh, giggly and delighted against your ear, John's grin, the way he licked his lips, the way he said your name, _the exact colour of his eyes_-

You stop, stand still in the middle of the room, hands curling at your side, head tilted up and back, looking to the ceiling (John's room). You close your eyes. You say, "The fare for a living man to cross the Styx is mistletoe, the golden bough of Aeneas."

* * *

Yours is not a mind made to know the path between the worlds of life and death. Even as you walk, it twists before your eyes, your logical mind rebelling, interpreting it all as something you can understand, as pavement and cobbles and worn patches of earth, as grass and sky, stone and sand. You know the reality is nothing like what you see.

You begin to play your violin as you cross the ink-black river, Charon's fierce gaze nothing to the music in your head – this song, this is the song you will play for John if – when – and it will be the best thing you have ever performed in your life, repayment for all those times when you played nothing but the shrieking disharmonious chords of your thoughts.

You coax majesty from your instrument, seguing from movement to movement, song to song, barely notice when your feet touch earth, when you walk past whining Cerberus, through gates that twist and blur in the corner of your eye.

You walk for an age, an eternity, and not long at all, to stand before the thrones of the King and Queen of the Dead.

Observe.

You see: a man, clean-shaven, stern-faced and brooding, something familiar in the curve of his nose and the tilt of his chin, hands callused (miner's hands). You see a girl, perhaps sixteen as you understand years, hands and feet soft and unmarked (scented, no, _anointed_, balsam oil, for the dead), uncertain in her husband's shadow, her eyes wide and troubled.

You see: streaks of white in the man's beard, fingers ringed with heavy gold (four: index, left, middle, left, ring finger, right, middle, right; three stones – _amethyst, emerald, sardonyx_ – metal surrounding them dinted and scratched, probably pure), a crown so bright and bejeweled you flinch. You see a woman in the prime of her life, straight-backed and almost haughty, elusive promise of youth ripened not into beauty but into strikingness, something that will last. Six, no, seven months pregnant (but dead – her hand does not flutter and curve protectively, she gives none of the little winces and sighs provoked by an active foetus, gives her rounded belly no regard at all. You have a moment of understanding – of course nothing grows in the realm of the dead).

You see: the man's sunken eyes, bright with wisdom, a face marked by years of frowning, beard and hair the dead white of age, skin creased and worn. You see a woman with staring eyes, misted and grey and looking always just beyond you, her brittle grey hair elaborately coiffed, liver-spotted hands made fragile by the addition of heavy rings.

(Her thumb brushes the back of his hand, old, familiar habit; he cradles her fingers like rose petals, something new and precious)

You see all this and more in one moment, and some of the things you see sitting upon the thrones of the King and Queen of the Dead are not in the slightest bit human.

You can bear the sight no more than you could bear to see John's beloved face made mockery by lack of colour. For the first time in your life, you avert your eyes.

You had speeches for this moment. Your voice would have soared, you would mix lofty rhetoric with earthy realism, sweeping generalisations tempered with heart-cut-quick-close personal anecdotes. You would tell them everything you loved of John that you never said when he was alive, and everything you despised and yet would not change for all the world. You would have touched their emotions with your own, would have used the universal desire for a mate, would have used everything you had to force them to see your loss as the earth-shattering disaster it is to you.

Another first: your words fail you. Your hands keep moving, the music keeps playing, but your voice has fled.

You say: "_Please,_" all your love compressed into a single word. Apollo has written paeans with less eloquence than the crack of your voice.

You will never remember what you said or played to bring tears to every eye under the rim of the earth where Death is lord. You know only that the Queen looked at you and smiled with still-damp cheeks and said, "Husband, let him have what he wants."

(There is a phrase isn't there, about the difference between wanting and needing, having and getting. You can't remember it under the deluge of _JohnJohnJohnohplease_.)

"So be it," the Lord of the Dead says, and something collapses inside you, relief heavy as mountains, light as air.

"Wait," she says, when that feeling is at its height and you don't know what to do – it will smother you, choke you, you cannot cope with the breadth of it. "A condition – a test, if you will."

(crown of dead leaves in her hair, goddess of spring)

"A test?" You say, voice choked and small. You do not say, _anything, anything, I will do anything, throw what you will at me, I will win if it means John's return._ You are not entirely a fool.

"Of faith," she says. "Do you have faith, Sherlock, famous of name?"

_in John, only ever in John_

"Turn," she says, pomegranate red mouth curved in a smile. "And walk. Behind you will follow your beloved. Do not look back."

She knows you have been doing nothing but since John died.

The smile of Hades is quiet and self-assured. "None leave the underworld by the way they came to it. Follow the path – you will know it. Do not leave it, and you will walk once more in the sunlight of the living world. Halt not, speak not, turn not until you both have left our kingdom. Then, and only then, will John Watson be yours once more."

"Thank you," you say, your heart thundering in your chest.

He laughs. It rolls like thunder. "He thanks us, wife."

Her laughter is sweet like spring rain. "How goes it, husband? What fools these mortals be!"

You turn and begin to walk. You do not look back. Their laughter follows you.

* * *

You can hear your heart beating, blood rushing in your ears, the sound of your feet against earth, against stone, the echo of Hades' laughter.

You cannot hear John.

The path is steep, and John's leg still trouble(d)s him now and then; he would not be able to keep from making small noises of discomfort, not at the unrelenting pace you are setting. You cannot hear him swearing softly under his breath, you cannot hear his footsteps, cannot hear the whisper of his clothing, his hands trailing against tree trunks or stone walls. You cannot hear him breathing.

When the laughter of Hades no longer rings in your ears you can hear nothing but absence, nothing but what should have been.

If you spoke, surely John could not keep himself from making some sarcastic remark back, surely he would reply, and you open your mouth –

(_speak not_)

You bite down until your lip bleeds.

Hours and hours pass and you keep eyes determinedly fixed upon the path ahead of you, though every fibre in you cries and screams that you are walking alone, that you have been tricked, that there is no one following you.

The silence has never been so terrible since the morning you woke and didn't have to realise John was not there, woke and didn't have to remind yourself he was gone. Your breath rasps in your throat, ragged and wet, the noise unbearably loud and from behind you there is no noise at all, just your tears, echoing.

You are alone, and the sunlight is cold and weak on your face - _you are **alone**_ and you cannot bear it, must _know_ and so you

turn

and

_look_.


	16. London Incarnate

**Prompt: **John isn't actually a person. He's the soul of London living in a human body.

...it's when I start working on London/Lestrade with yet another version of London that it gets a little ridiculous. Good thing someone's already prompted that.

* * *

**London Incarnate**

**a ballad of bedlam, or, the origin(s) of London Incarnate**

When London was very young, brick and mosaic (_ave, domin(a/us) londinium_), it used to start from the beginning, found itself brought forth in blood and squalling (_fearpainanger _everything new and big and threatening (deadly) and London so very small and helpless).

But London was young then, and bound by the Wall, and mortal shape fit it well. It was nothing like what it would be, _brick/earth/stone/life_ all forced to fit into _ten fingers, ten toes, one set genitalia_, entirely the wrong sort of limbs and senses.

Londinium was not so many buildings, not so many people and pigeons and rats and foxes and flies, not so many streets and parts and legends. It was easier, then, for London to be summoned forth into human shape and seeming – it was _possible _for London to be called into human shape and seeming.

(_a cautionary tale of childhood:_

It happened, by the by, that Londinium – chief residence of merchants, mart of trade and commerce – was born a girl, daughter of legionary and a river woman.

It is unknown just how this came to pass – mortal magic is presumed to have forced the issue – but pass it did that the town unworthy to be called a _colonia _was the first child born to the new settlement.

Now, her people were the people of Rome, far from him though they had travelled and conquered, and so they recognised what she was and took her to the temple, to be consecrated, to be sheltered, to be taught to keep the Pax Romana.

She was well cared for, and attended at every moment, for the Romans were City-people (_anno urbis conditae_), not city people, and knew the power of Genii Locorum.

But in a.u.c. DCCCXIII, twenty years since its founding and her birth, Londinium burned and her guards could do nothing, for she was the City and the City was her and they burned for Boudicca's daughters. For three generations after, s/he left the womb scarred.

The moral of the story is this: humans are the city, but the City is not human.)

London hated_hated_hated being dependent. It could not stand that it needed to be guided to suitable flesh, that there were incantations and invocations, that he would spend a childhood being cared for by others, that she would grow so slowly, that s/he was _known _as what it was, London in a human shape.

To be so vulnerable, so dependent upon the caretakers of his/her mortal flesh – one or two terrible lifetimes, London couldn't even speak to itself, had no idea if a fire was burning, if the Stone was being touched, the bridge being crossed, if the sky was clear on the other side of the river.

A balance had to be struck, between human-shaped and human-formed.

(_regarding the necessity of metaphysical safety valves:_

There comes a time in every City's life when the magic is more about the City than the people in it.

In its youth, the assumption of mortal practitioners is that the power lies with them: in the magicians, the sorcerers, the witches, the wizards, the warlocks. They are the magic that flows where the green places are stymied, they have the power, the city bends to them.

However, when a City has reached a certain age, a certain amount of deep-rooted history, the power flows the other way, the magic lies in the City's streets and buildings. The magic can be borrowed by those with talent, but nobody doubts that the power is in the City.

Time, you see. Cities are made of lives and time. Magic worked under and over every stone in the City so many times, it sinks into the land and stays.

One thousand two hundred and four years after its original founding, the City of London acquired a priory, home to the sisters of the Order of the Star of Bethlehem. This was unimportant at the time.

Ninety years later, the priory had become a hospital, and twenty years from that it took in the first of the type of patients that would make its Name. This was still unimportant.

The important thing was this: that London's genius loci, to use the name by which it first knew itself, London's spirit – had in previous generations attempted to Incarnate itself at a stage in life preferable to it.

London was larger than Londinium, older and more settled, had been burned and abandoned and rebuilt and seen countless generations pass – it drove itself mad. It was not merely attempting to fit itself into a human – difficult enough as it aged – but attempting to _create _a human from nothing.

One moment it was

_streets buildings rivers people, every part moving functioning working together, equilibrium, quintessence_

and the next it was

_so small so breakable so insignificant, one among thousands, among millions, what is that 'smell' what is that 'colour' what is that sensation what is that, why am I not (one-in-many/many-in-one) me why am I human, I am trapped I am so small I can't breathe (what is breath) how can I be City be human be both I am so much more than human, why am I trapped in this body with these eyes and thoughts and limbs and_

Of course London went mad. And for London to go mad –

Everything of London is life; consequently everything of London's was touched by the madness. Something had to be done with the overflow while London struggled with Incarnation.

That is the story of how Bedlam came to be.)

London learned quickly, for a given value of quick – perhaps six generations and he could die and find herself standing by the Stone in the next breath, and from then on London had the art of it. It forgot there was ever a time before, it began to believe that it had always Incarnated as it had, and if it ever remembered otherwise, such memories were only the muddled confusion of the world's oldest mental institution.

(_the truth of the matter:_

There is London the City and there is London Incarnate. Everything else is a matter of conjecture.

What does Bedlam know, after all? It is only seven hundred and sixty-three.)

.

**john h watson**

When London Incarnates, there is always a moment of disorientation – _male/female, what's the difference/why so soft so fragile so small/what is that, what is that, smell, touch and taste and sound, oh, everything is new/different from last time, time before, me_– followed by a name, a date of birth, a childhood, an adolescence, an occupation, a personality...

It lasts less than a millisecond and longer than a lifetime.

John Watson curls his shaking fingers around the iron grille covering the London Stone and gasps like a man pulled from the Thames.

He is average height, average looks, brown hair, blue eyes, nondescript in every way – the idea is never to bring (the wrong sort of) attention to himself.

Upon his body, marks of experience, of a life well lived – he has learned from experience that their absence unnerves others, makes people look at him with puzzled suspicion, unable to pinpoint what unnerves them but uneasy nonetheless.

Laugh lines, frown lines, a burn from childhood (he just never mentions that childhood was two thousand years ago), calluses from frequent handling of a gun (ever since the gun was invented, in fact), ugly new scarring on his shoulder a memento of war (_Afghanistan or Iraq?_ but John is thinking of bombs on the Tube and quiet defiance, _London drinks tea in your general direction_), shaking hands and psychosomatic limp the easiest symptoms to spot on home-returned soldiers.

Every mark is a quick means of establishing the type of man he is in this Incarnation: gun calluses rather than sword, war wounds rather than work accidents, a surgeon with shaking hands rather than a butcher with steady ones, a military posture, a steady gaze, a limp that worsens when things about him are quiet and calm.

He closes his eyes, searches – yes, there are the necessary records, birth certificate, medical history, GCSEs, A Levels, Intercalated BSc, Medical Sciences, MBBS, General Medical Council registration...

No one can appear of nothing these days.

He becomes more sure of himself, enough to reach out and test – _friendly, forgettable John Watson? You remember him, yes? He attended your school, your university, he was your friend, he was your acquaintance, your student, your enemy, your ally. He was in your regiment, your battalion, he saved your life, he failed to save your friend, he took a bullet for you, far from home. You know John Watson, don't you?_

They always do. Their memories are London's memories are John Watson's memories, and everything is true because they believe it.

(The distinction between City and Incarnate is a blur of wet ink, never a line.)

Anyone could tell you: John Watson is an ordinary, unremarkable man.

(He knows London, every building, every cobble, every side street, every traffic light pattern, every type of earth on which London is built. He knows where the pigeons roost and the foxes den and the rats feast. At rush hour his heart speeds up and he cannot keep still, has to _move_; on bank holidays he is lethargic and irritable. When he needs to be somewhere quickly the lights are green, when he wants to be alone his chosen spot is quietly ignored, when he is exceptionally happy the skies are clear and blue.

When he wants a flatmate, an old friend happens to be sitting on a park bench as he limps by.)

.

**the striking of the stone**

_Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon London Stone, I charge and command_

Sometimes London lives out entire lives in quiet anonymity, and only the archives will know the name of that Incarnation fifty years later – just one of millions history will forget.

But sometimes London's Incarnations are the ones to _make _history (that brief and brutal life in the late nineteenth century, that long legend-lost one in the fourteenth), because there is something London needs and would not otherwise receive.

John Watson knows which one his life will be the moment Sherlock Holmes says "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

The London Stone sits safe behind glass and iron and still he feels the words like the blow of a sword upon it –

(Now is Sherlock Holmes lord of John Watson.)

He hated that sensation of claiming once.

This time he leans on his cane, thinks of how he woke up desolate, shaking with pain and nightmarish echoes, and decides he'll do anything to keep this.

.

**beating the bounds**

_blessing:_

"Isn't it amazing?" Harry says, bright-eyed. "How little things can change your life? There's me, cursing taxis to hell and back because they never bloody stop for me, ever, the bastards, and fuck it, Tube it is, and then it turns out the love of my life's sitting opposite, and we'd never have met if it wasn't for that sodding cabbie!"

"Oh my God," John says helplessly. "Harry, please tell me you aren't going to use that as your toast on your wedding day."

"Someone up there likes me, John," Harry says blissfully. "I've never been happier in my life, seriously."

"Good," John says simply. "I know we don't get on sometimes, but I like it when you're happy, Harry, I really do. So, try not to mess this up?"

"Fuck you," Harry says, laughing, head titled back. "Be my chief bridesmaid?"

"I think you mean 'best man'," John says.

"No, I mean bridesmaid," Harry insists. "You can have a top hat, but you've got to wear a dress with it."

John shakes his head and sighs a long-suffering sigh. Harry's mouth twitches unrepentantly.

("Things this good don't happen to me," she admits quietly when John is about to leave.

"Sure they do," John says brightly, cajoling. "London moves in mysterious ways for your happiness, Harry, ~mysterious~ ways!" He wiggles his fingers at her, grinning.

"Oh, you prick," Harry says, slapping at him with her bag. "For that, you're wearing a corset.")

_protection:_

"You've got the luck of the bloody devil," Lestrade says, shaking his head. "God's sake, Sherlock, could you _try_ not to be so bloody stupid? Wait for someone to accompany you? _Not _run after murderers into dark alleys?"

"I've got someone looking out for me," Sherlock rasps, with an irritable glance at the nearest CCTV camera.

The fox that screamed, attracting the attention of passers-by and bringing help when Sherlock needed it, slips back into the alley shadows and trots off to a restaurant John knows, not usually as careless with its leavings as it will be tonight.

_limits:_

_"Harry and me don't get on. Never have."_

Sometimes she looks at John, bleary-eyed, breath stinking of alcohol and says, _"Who are you?"_

"John," he tells her, "You know, _your brother?_"

"I'm an only child," Harry Watson says. "I – Johnny?"

"Yeah," John says, relieved enough that he doesn't even care she calls him Johnny, like he's still a child. "Yeah, Harry."

"Why don't I believe you?" She says quietly, voice shaking. "John – why don't I remember you?"

"But you do," John says, puzzled, spreads his hands. "Harry, if you'd stop drinking so much-"

"I don't _remember_ you," she says. "I – John, sometimes I think you just appeared one day. But that's crazy, right? I – you know, I have memories, lots of them, I was there when you were born, I gave you your favourite teddy bear – I'm never letting you live that down, by the way. I mean, _Mister Luffalot?_ I remember – I remember – but sometimes I don't, and John – John, you _are _my brother, right?"

"Of course I am," John says gently, kisses her cheek and bids her goodnight and takes her hangover with him when he goes, poison in the palm of his hand.

_"Want to see some more?"_

The first time Sherlock asks John to accompany him to a case outside of London, John pauses, fear clutching at his heart at the very idea: _leave London?_

John has memories of a desert war, half a world away, but as London Incarnate –

_When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford._

He's not sure any Incarnate has ever left London, for any reason. Plague, fire, flood, bombing – nothing has ever driven him/her/them away. Perhaps he will cease to exist if he crosses the City limits. Perhaps he's just never had a compelling reason.

(John always wanted to visit Rome.)

"Sure," he says, swallows hard.

The City hums in the back of his head, whispers of need and service, necessity, and lets him go.

.

**a spider in the centre of its web**

London likes Jim Moriarty. He is a worthy foil for Sherlock Holmes, challenges him to newer and greater heights, turns mere story into enduring legend.

John hates Moriarty, what he goads Sherlock into being, the lives he threatens for _fun_.

London is willing to sacrifice a few lives for a game that will go down in history.

John – it's not his place to interfere. Incarnate and City don't necessarily have to be in agreement. Not until certain lines are crossed.

.

**the warning**

Jim Moriarty wakes to John Watson standing at the foot of his bed. He doesn't ask how he found him, how he managed to get in without tripping any of his defensive measures.

Arrogance.

He laughs and says, "Sherlock's pet, come to visit little old me? Oh, I'm so pleased, self-kidnapping service!"

"Listen," John Watson says, and moonlight makes his eyes shine silver. "I love theatricality, love a chance to bemoan what the world is coming to, love to have an enemy to hate –"

"Getting a bit above your station, aren't you?" Jim says blandly. "What makes you think I want to hear anything _you've _got to say?"

"_You're _the one misjudging your importance," John says sharply, lip curling at the arrogance. "There is only one Sherlock Holmes. But there are countless criminals he can test himself against. Don't think you're essential, Moriarty."

"Of course _you_ wouldn't understand," Jim sneers. "Boring, plodding little dog, trailing in Sherlock's wake, I don't know _what _he sees in you-"

"I'm warning you," John says, "because I like you, you've been a good foe for Sherlock, so you deserve a bit of grace, don't you think? I'm giving you a friendly warning, try and listen. It'll be worth your while."

Jim snorts. "Go on," he mocks. "Warn me."

John's voice is a multitude and his eyes the glittering of countless distant electric lights. "London rejects you," he says steadily, deadly intent, the words calm and touched by the sing-song recitation of oath. "The streets deny you. No ticket or card from your hand will let you pass the barrier of the Underground, no bus or cab will stop for you, no train will open its doors to you, no building will give you shelter.

"Your money is false in the shopkeeper's hand, no ATM will recognise your card, your account numbers no longer exist, are mere digit strings.

"Wherever you go, the cameras will follow you, the lights will show you, enemy of London.

"Leave or be destroyed. Return and be damned."

Jim Moriarty bursts out laughing. "I _own _this city!"

"No you don't," London says.

.

**the invocation**

Says Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty's hands at his throat, snipers at his back, feet teetering, "_Domine – Domine Dirige Nos, Domine Dirige Nos_-!"

His eyes meet John's

_oh._

and John is far from his power, but he is the City and the City is him and he has been Called, _Sherlock _Calls and he reaches out/in/down/up and

.

**domine dirige nos**

London's magic is old magic, is City magic, is not human magic though it is human in origin. London is more than its generations of build and burn and renew, more than the countless lives made and given and lost and found and ended upon its earth, more than a human could contemplate.

London is life and power untameable.

(in the first quarter of the blood-red cross, the sword)

One of London's own asks for protection, one of London's calls it – one who has walked its streets, crossed its rivers and eaten its bread, spilt blood upon its stones and offered prayers to its sky, and London's shape is human only because it chooses to be.

(holding the shield, the dragon)

The dragon is everywhere in the heart of London: carved into arches, hidden among parapets, squeezed into entablature, standing upon pedestals, guarding the boundaries of the City, red-crossed wings spread wide.

But to call what London is a dragon –

If it were at all aware of something standing at its feet, it might be amused at the limited perception. 'Dragon' is too simple a way to look at it, and the only way to see it.

There is the suggestion of lashing tail and flared nostrils and darting arrow-headed tongue but at a size and form incomprehensible. Its scales are the silver-black-smog of shadow and gleam, the red markings on its wings indistinguishable from old brick, fine port or fresh blood. One fierce gold eye is the sunrise, the other the sunset. One gleaming claw pressed down could open an abyss in the earth. If its wings bothered to beat, it would take a century for them to unfold.

A billion lives in its eyes, a thousand million footsteps a year remembered on each scale, a billion billion little names and stories in its belly, of interest only to other little ghosts who thought (convinced themselves) they were more than ants to the City, and the very idea that a single human should be worth taking notice of is absurd.

"_Domine_," whispers one of the tiny living things.

London _looks_.

(Sherlock Holmes covers his eyes; Jim Moriarty's laughter is a scream)

.

**sherlock**

"...John?"


	17. The Picture of Jim Moriarty

**Prompt:** At the beginning of his career as a consulting criminal Moriarty spent the first money he earned for a portrait. Soon he noticed the portrait had started to change: for every criminal action he took his painted self turned uglier and uglier...

* * *

**The Picture of Jim Moriarty**

In his portrait, Jim Moriarty looks fresh-faced and young and his dark eyes glint merrily like a schoolboy with a secret.

It almost _breathes_, it is that exquisite, that lifelike, everything from brush-strokes to composition a study in perfection.

Jim looks at it for a long moment, quietly proud of himself – for obtaining the money necessary to buy talent, for the method by which he obtained that money, for simply being the sort of person that wants a portrait of himself – because it is a work of _art_, and it is Jim's. He contemplates killing the artist so that his possession can never be bettered.

The changing light in the room alters the painted eyes in some subtle way, turns their careless merriment into something darker, more mocking.

_Magnificent._

* * *

Jim begins to build his empire with victimless crimes, quiet invisible thefts of identity and money that is nothing more than numbers on a screen. It is mildly satisfying, the way Jim has always enjoyed mathematics, taking numbers apart and putting them together again in complex equations to leave his teachers baffled.

It doesn't satisfy the _hunger _in him, the restlessness that made him choose a criminal career for himself, but Jim is not going to be a fool, ending his days detained at her majesty's pleasure; he will have time to indulge one day. For now, he is the most harmless criminal you could meet.

Jim might be new to the business – as opposed to the pleasure – but he understands the virtue of invisibility, that there can be nothing more valuable to him.

Every day he glances in the mirror to establish the persona he will wear for the day. He spends hours at his portrait to see himself.

In his portrait, Jim Moriarty smiles slyly, eyes gleaming.

* * *

There is a careful balance Jim must find, between keeping clean and letting others know how dirty he is willing to get. He can't be trusted by all classes of criminals if he's seen as nothing more than white-collar criminal. It's just not _respectable,_ and if you don't have respect in this business, you have nothing.

There are layers, and Jim is at the top (or bottom, depending on how you look at). So he goes down (or up) a step or two, not street-level, but hardly Tower 42, and carves himself a little niche as a man who is willing to do things.

Dear Jim, and if you've got a problem Jim can solve it, or order it solved, depending on the nature of the request. Never something so obvious that his backers and business allies will start to worry (you want your money cleaned? Jim will fix it, not a fingerprint on it, none of that careless, low class criminal _mess_) but enough that the street hears and listens and starts to think (did you hear? that mark? work of Moriarty).

In his portrait, the folded handkerchief in Jim Moriarty's suit pocket is spotted red, and his expression twisted and cold. His eyes are shadowed as if he has spent long nights without sleep, fighting nightmares.

* * *

Jim tries to remember if he was having a bad week when his portrait was painted.

He thinks it was a good week – fantastic even, so why his portrait should look so hollow-cheeked and cold, or the constantly practised smile that he _knows _he was wearing during his sitting so twisted and awkward is beyond him.

It is still magnificent, of course, but. But. There something about it that brings a creeping malevolence to mind; it is yellow wallpaper and lonely crossroads, restless shadows and a disembodied heart thumping beneath the floor, locked rooms and gaslight.

It is the idea of gaslight that makes Jim see – he looks at his portrait every day, the subtle changes would of course be invisible to him. But he knows he smiled for his portrait, and his smile was as polished and perfect as inexperience allowed – he would of course be better at it now – and his suit was certainly neat and new, not the slightly ragged cheap-looking thing with near invisible stains Jim sees before him.

"Ah," he says, and smiles. "Well, well."

In his portrait, Jim Moriarty's lips curl back in something too ruthless, too mirthless to call a smile, showing teeth. His hands gleam wetly and leave red marks upon the papers crumpled in one fist.

* * *

There is something freeing in having his sins expressed on canvas. What Jim sees when he looks is that he will never be punished for his crimes – how can he be, when his portrait takes them instead?

So Jim who'll fix it and Moriarty who will break it, between them they create a monster.

* * *

In his portrait, Jim Moriarty looks old, ravaged by time and excess, his gnarled hands stained red to the elbow, dried blood under his fingernails, chemical stains on his fingers. His young man's suit hangs off of his twisted frame, bowed beneath the weight of age and guilt. His face is creased and worn, ugly with habitual contempt, scarred and snarling.

Jim Moriarty perfects the knot of his tie with steady, nimble fingers, brushes his young unmarked hands down his neat suit. He winks at his portrait and goes to meet Sherlock Holmes.


	18. Sherlock Went Down To London

**Prompt: **GUYS.

HEY. GUYS.

You know Charlie Daniels' song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia?" Yeah, the devil is totally Sherlock and JOHNNY is obviously John. Devilock's fiddle skills are bested by some little dude singing about chickens and mountains on fire(Smaug.?&)? What happens next? Do they become BFFs? Sex it out?

Crack, smut, fluff, I don't care. Humor is definitely a must though! :)

* * *

"Objectively speaking," the Devil started, but John cut him off quickly, having already learned better.

"There is no such thing as 'objectively speaking'," he said, waving his clarinet for emphasis. "Music is all about subjectivity. And you liked mine better."

"It was _Lord of the Rings_," the Devil sniffed. "That's got to be cheating, John! How am I meant to resist a literary magnum opus set so perfectly to music?"

"It was _the Hobbit_!" John said, scandalised. "Don't tell me you don't recognise the Hobbit!"

"Of course I recognise the Hobbit!" The Devil closed his eyes and looked quietly appalled at John's obtuseness. "I'm just saying it's _part_ of the Lord of the Rings!"

"And you can't possibly accuse _me_ of cheating," John continued, steamrolling ahead seemingly unaffected by the pout of one immensely powerful supernatural being, "_you're_ the Lord of Lies, it's one of your titles!"

"I never lie!" The Devil snapped, sounding insulted. "It's beneath me. My sin is Pride, as you well know – I tell the exact truth, it's not my fault how idiots interpret it."

"There can't be much that's beneath you," John wondered, apparently dismissing the rest of the sentence.

"...Has your self-preservation instinct abandoned you for a lemming?" The Devil said, looking fascinated and a little baffled by the idea that someone might insult him to his face.

"I'm just saying – Hell's pretty much the textbook definition of 'as far down as you can go', isn't it?"

"Metaphorically speaking," the Devil began in a tone of lecture, then stopped and shook his head. "Look, you won, what do you want?"

John blinked. "Really? You're really not going to – I dunno, eviscerate me or something for beating you?"

"We already had this debate, do keep up," the Devil said. "You'll have to be quick, I'm afraid, my brother needs to be stopped from taking all the pastries 'for the world's own good'."

"Erm," John said. "I didn't actually expect to win, to be honest. I mean, you're _the Devil_, it just didn't seem possible. I'd no idea you were such a big fan. And, um. Why exactly would you stop your brother stealing all the world's pastries...?"

"Well," the Devil said, "for one, it will annoy Mycroft terribly. For another – gluttony is still on the listed sins. If I fail, I'll have allowed Mycroft to indulge in the sin of gluttony, while depriving the world of one of those comforting things that lets the idiots believe that maybe not everything is so bad. If I succeed, Mycroft is thwarted, and people get to keep on gorging themselves on cream-smothered luxuries while a good portion of the world remains starving in abject poverty. Win/win, I think you'll find."

"...Brilliant," John said.

The Devil grinned broadly. "Isn't it? So, did you want ten years astounding talent and an early death? Legends are made that way, it's good for repeat business."

"Erm. No," John said, and because the Devil looked so dejected, found himself adding, "Can I think about it?"

"Certainly," the Devil said genially. John thought he sounded oddly eager to let it go, considering. "I'll drop in on you, say, a week from now? Seven days, that's appropriately mystical, isn't it?"

"Sure," John said. "I mean, if you say, it's pretty much got to be, hasn't it? ...Uh. How do I introduce you? I mean, I can't tell my landlady the Devil's likely to drop in and could she warn me?"

"Oh, Mrs Hudson knows me," the Devil said, waving a hand dismissively. "Had a chat with her about her husband a few years ago. But anyway, call me Sherlock."

"Sherlock," John repeated. "That's – unusual."

The Devil gave him a blank look.

"Right, right, of course," John said hastily, cheeks reddening slightly with embarrassment. "I – er – liked your song too, by the way," he said awkwardly.

"Mendelssohn's Lieder," Sherlock said, with – good god, endearing enthusiasm. "He's composed some fantastic new things since coming downstairs – Mycroft doesn't know what he's missing. I'll play some more for you some time."

"I'd like that," John said. "Actually – is seven days a formal necessity? Because I was just thinking – there's a good Chinese just down the street from my place. And I don't need to make up my mind right away, do I?"

"Oh, no, no," Sherlock said, tucking his violin away into his coat, where it left no sign of its former presence. "In fact, I think I'll put it down in the paperwork that you're a slow corruption and claim expenses. Tell me, however did you manage to get Smaug's tone with a clarinet?"


	19. The Book of Heart

**Prompt: **Actually, two prompts that got muddled up in my head. **(1):** Maybe because of Reichenbach or some accident Sherlock dies and John can't accept it. John goes to great and terrible lengths, defying nature, to bring Sherlock back from the dead. Give me angst! Give me horror! Make me cry! and **(2):** When Sherlock dies at Reichenbach, John brings him back to life by eating human hearts in his dreams.

Beware of character death, gore, inappropriate medical use of puppies ...

* * *

The first night John returns home after – After.

The flat is still and silent and though nothing in it has changed it is somehow devoid of the sense of home it had – before. John looks at everything in a stunned, silent daze, picks up cushions and moves abandoned mugs and gently picks at the bullet-marked wall before he collapses upon the sofa like a puppet with its strings cut.

He stares at the ceiling and doesn't say a word, as if he is some fairy tale princess who can win back her beloved with her silence.

He thinks of Sherlock, how any minute now he will walk in and curl beside him on the sofa, how they will push at each other awkwardly and entwine their limbs and fold together to fit: John's mouth will touch Sherlock's long throat, brush against his jaw, Sherlock will reach up and angle his arm to bury his fingers in John's hair, and he'll turn his head and say –

John feels his face contort: his mouth open, wordless, his eyes squint shut, hot and itchy.

He gasps, wet and ragged, and presses his shaking hands against his eyes.

(His hands smell of blood; he can feel it flaking against his skin.)

"Sherlock," he croaks, but all it does is give the darkness more weight.

* * *

John looks up from his book (peeling red foil images, the heart repeating, wavering almost into words, a title) and stares at himself, six years old, puppy in his hands, held up for inspection, _please may I keep it?_

In his father's voice, John says, _no, Johnny._

John watches his features crumple, tears flood his eyes and spill over, drip from his chin.

_what do you want a puppy for, anyway?_ He hears his father ask. _oh, you'll dote over it now, but just who is going to end up cleaning up its shit, eh?_

_I'll look after it, I will_, he swears, hugging the puppy close to his chest, where it whimpers softly and presses tiny paws against his heart. _I'll feed it and clean up after it an' everythin', please daddy._

In his father's voice, John says, _put it down._

John kneels and puts the puppy on the kitchen floor. Its paws skitter against the cheap linoleum, it bumps against his feet and falls onto its hindquarters and complains with an irritated yelp.

In his own voice, John asks, "Do you love it?"

_I'll be good forever, I won't ask for Christmas presents or anything, please,_

"How much do you love it? Enough to give your heart?"

_please daddy_

John's hands are steady on the scalpel, on the saw, cracking open ribs, cutting the heart loose from its moorings.

The puppy cowers in the corner, red in its fur.

The heart is surprisingly tender, warm and red and raw as it slips down his throat in torn pieces. It tastes like potential and tears and when he's finished chewing and wiped his chin, finicky as a cat, it occurs to John that his child self still needs a heart to carry on with.

The puppy wriggles and flails and howls between his lungs as he closes its cage of bone, muffles its voice by folding the muscle and flesh back over and he can't hear it at all as he stitches the skin neatly closed and Harry says, "Gonna pine for fourteen years, Greyfriars Bobby?"

"Fuck off, Harry," John says, his dog-heart growling in his chest and Sherlock is walking beside a waterfall, rolling a cigarette he won't smoke and saying something John can't hear over the roar of the water and down John sinks with flesh between his teeth, down down down.

* * *

When John wakes up, his palm is over his heart and he feels it beat against his fingers (_lubdub_), surprised somehow by its rhythm.

He sits up and wrinkles his nose at his clothes, yesterday's leavings, and staggers to the shower. The water is hot as it never is when Sherlock is awake first, as he always is, and John presses his hands against the slick tiles and counts his breaths.

When he emerges again, clean clothed, hair damp against the nape of his neck and skin tight and dry, he feels a bit more like the man he used to be, which is better by far than feeling like a new one.

He walks the flat, collecting mugs and cutlery for the cleared out sink, and wipes dust with a worn cloth, helping nothing and merely moving it around, but he leaves the body parts and chemical apparatus and doesn't do more than glance at the acid-stained kitchen table, because Sherlock always gets tetchy when John calls biohazard and throws out his 'experiments' and it's not worth it, all things considered.

(Anyway, he's pretty sure the only experiment going on is 'how far can I push John before he puts his foot down?' – and he has long since grown immune to the smell of rotting flesh.)

He thinks about taking a walk along the river, or calling Harry, or going to the surgery.

His phone is silent in his pocket and he turns it off when he realises he is waiting for Sherlock to text.

* * *

**the soul is seven-parted,** explains the Ibis in its whispery voice. **there is the _ha_, the _sheut_, the _ren_, the _ba_, the _ka_, the _akh_ and the _ib_. It is the _ib_ we are here to judge.**

The hall in which they stand is endless, John thinks: his voice will echo forever.

**you must understand. first: the heart is _ib_, spiritual, and the heart is _haty_, physical.**

John holds Jim Moriarty's heart in his hands and knows the weighted feather is not enough to balance the scales. He washes it in river water and dries it like a newborn. Between his palms it beats and cries out in an old tongue (_oh my heart of my mother – oh my heart of my being – do not rise up against me as witness_).

**the word for when a heart dries up is _wesher_,** informs the Ibis.

Gently John places the heart (ruby-red and glittering, black and liquid at its core), upon the golden scales, opposite the vast feather he cannot look at directly, and watches, blank-faced, as they tip and swing.

**the heart that is powerless, dark with anger, is _depet; _a bitter heart is_ deher._**

It is a heavy feather (if John looks out of the corner of his eye, he can see a goddess curled there upon the scale), but Jim Moriarty's is a heavy heart, and the scales tip and fall, and into John's hands the heart returns, cracked and screaming. John smiles at Moriarty's wide-eyed, open-mouthed howl of outrage, and bites down, hard, flooding his mouth with bitter black blood.

**_aq_ is for the heart that perishes**, says the Ibis, voice dry as an empty river bed. John tears at Moriarty's heart with blunt teeth and Moriarty screams and screams and

**the heart on the scales is _ib_ and _haty_ both; thus can Ammet find sustenance in flesh.**

John traces the blood dribbling down to his wrist with his tongue and licks his fingers clean, one by one, mouth wet and warm and stained.

(**_wekh_ is the heart that is shrouded in darkness,** warns the Ibis.)

* * *

He has eight missed calls and twelve unread messages. He listens to them all dutifully and deletes them one by one.

He gets up and walks out of the flat, blinking like something newborn in the sunlight, and lets himself be buffeted to and fro by indifferent pedestrians, each in their own untouchable worlds.

He walks and walks and doesn't care where he ends up, but he's smiling for what feels like the first time in weeks.

* * *

Harry wears her wedding dress, the white that John joked was false representation, and hums as she fiddles nervously with her hair, her back to the door.

In the mirror, John removes his top hat and turns it thoughtfully in his hands, his fingers looking rough and awkward against the grey woolfelt.

_Johnny!_ Harry crows delightedly in greeting._ looking very smart_, she coos, and in the mirror she tugs at his morning suit fussily, straightens his already knocked askew tie, twiddles his cuff-links to be perfectly in line and John waits patiently, parade rest, and lets her work.

_how do I look?_ she demands, and when she stands it in is in frock coat and striped trousers, sleek and shining, cravat a splash of crimson at her throat.

"Like a woman in love," John says softly, placing his hat on the table.

_don't get sappy on me now, little brother,_ Harry teases, her smile lopsided, her lipstick just a little smeared. She'll fix it before the ceremony, bitching at John for not telling her.

John closes his eyes as he hugs her, folds her into his arms. "I love you," he says. "But you know it will only end badly, don't you? You know you don't need this, not like I do. I don't have one any more," and his hand finds the latches to her chest and opens it deftly to remove her heart from its snug organ-cushioned home.

"You don't need it, Harry," John says, tastes the lie like liquorice on his tongue, and her heart in his mouth is burned, rubbed with salt.

Harry is crying silently, hands seeking blindly in her empty chest, and John feels sorry for her, almost, almost doubts – but when he turns his head he can see Sherlock walking upon the shore, waves lapping at his ankles; beyond him the sea and sky stretch out into forever and the blur where they meet is something like hope.

* * *

"How are you doing?" Ella asks in her cool, professional voice, pen hovering over paper.

"Fine," John says blankly. "Fine." He resists the urge to move his leg and relieve its (phantom) ache.

"John," she says, barely strained patience.

John keeps his eyes focussed on her shoulder and says nothing.

"If you don't want help," Ella says, frustration leaking into her tone, "John, why are you _here_?"

John closes his eyes.

"I dream he'll walk in any moment," he says at last, and Ella smiles, relieved, thinking they're getting somewhere; John watches the clock and says 'mm-hm' and 'yes' and 'no' and 'maybe' and 'I don't know' in all the appropriate places.

He wants to say, _I dream I'm eating hearts._

He wants to say, _I know that if I take enough, sacrifice enough, I can have Sherlock back. _

He wants to say, _sometimes I think I need Sherlock to breathe, without him I can't focus, I can't see a thing – I think I'd give everything just to have him back, and I'm not sure it's right, but I can't change my mind any more, because in my chest my heart is dogged and loyal and bites at my ribs every time I think of stopping._

He wants the answer to be something simple, something trite, something true. It would probably sound like _love is always sacrifice_.

* * *

Sherlock beneath the water, his eyes open, hands outstretched, and John's single short scream repeating.

Says fierce-eyed Charon,** the soul is two-parted: the ψυχή, your individuality, your personal immortality, lives in your head. It makes you what you are. Your θυμός is your heat, your motion, your life and lives in your heart; without your ψυχή you breathe but do not live, but without your θυμός all you are is the shade that enters the realm of Hades.**

"Sherlock," John says, moans, _keens_, a dying animal. "Sherlock!"

Sherlock's fingers scrabbling at John's hand around his wrist, trying to pry him away, thin threads of blood curling in the ice-cold water, turning into words, _believe me to be, my dear fellow, very sincerely yours -_

"I won't," John tells him, "I won't, damn you – trying to make me – I won't let you go!"

**The thread of his life has been cut,** Charon warns, but without any expectation that he will be heard. John is not Orpheus, but the music in his head is much the same, a ceaseless beat (SherlockSherlockSherlock).

"Take it," John says, fierce and low, and when he presses his lips to Sherlock's, it is not his air he gives, but the hearts he has collected, sliding mouth to mouth slick with blood and heavy with significance. "Live, Sherlock,"

But Sherlock shakes his head, silver-coin eyes staring blindly, mouth moving soundlessly, reeling a list of deductions John cannot hear, and then John realises that he has forgotten – there is one heart above all others that Sherlock needs.

_your heat, your motion, your life, it lives in your heart._

Tenderly, John reaches into Sherlock's chest, closes his eyes so he can't see the mute look of betrayal.

"I'm only going to give it back to you," he says, but he knows that's not the point. Taken from him and returned this way –

Sherlock's heart, fierce and barbed, tastes like metal, like air, like thought, and he shudders as he divides it carefully and swallows it down, fire and ice combining in his throat.

Sherlock shakes his head fiercely when he tries to return it, mouth clamped shut, _no no no_, and John has to force his mouth open, has to – because whatever Sherlock wants, it's nothing compared to how much John needs to see him live.

**your fare**, says the ferryman, and tips a shining coin into John's palm.

* * *

This is what will happen:

After months and months of not-living, John will wake to blood in his mouth and Mrs Hudson's scream.

He will wonder at the tears on his face, and the coldness in his chest, and walk like a man blinded.

He will open the door.

Sherlock will be there.


	20. The Mycroft Minions

**Prompt: **Considering how Mycroft is always watching, and has black cars gliding around ready to kidnap/pick up whoever he is looking for, he must have entire teams of minions to monitor the CCTV and so on.

Can we have minion!POVs of anything? Reports of Baker St. disturbances, hardest high-fiving each other when Mycroft gets a date with Lestrade and they grab a photo from their sniper scopes... I have faith, fandom!

* * *

**The Mycroft Minions**

"Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be…" he pulled out his ID and peered at it. "Jesus. Little bro must have pissed him off something fierce."

"I dunno," one of the others said, voice muffled beneath his mask, "I quite like being David Bowie."

"That's because you get _Bowie_ as alias. That's not a punishment, that's a conferment of godhood. I'm _Reginald Dwight_. That's even worse than 'Elton John'. Just."

"I'm actually more of a Simply Red fan." 'David' looked at the blank expression on his co-worker's face and made a futile attempt to change the subject. "Er. Y'think we can make a complaint to Brussels about abuse in the workplace?"

"…"

"Yeah, stupid question. Sorry."

"…I am very disappointed in you."

"We shoot people together on a regular basis and you're going to stop talking to me because of musical differences?"

"Irreconcilable musical differences," Reginald corrected.

"I don't know what either of you are complaining about," interrupted the mission leader, flinging his cigarette on the ground. "Just who is going by the name of Englebert Humperdinck here?"

Reginald and David exchanged looks and very carefully didn't snicker.

* * *

_Right, give it up. How'd you get Bowie? You get Him a date with the cop?_

No. But I did arrange things so that He got thirty minutes more flirting than He would have had otherwise.

_Good one. Since you're in His good books, how about asking for a Christmas Party?_

Christmas Party? I thought the good part of this job was never having to go to one of those again.

_Psst. Just got a text from A; game on for tonight._

Why'd you write 'psst'? It's note, you moron. I don'

* * *

(sent at 03:05) I can't believe He caught you.

(sent at 03:05) He didn't catch me.

(sent at 03:07) Sure. You're on Royal Duty because you pulled the short straw.

(sent at 03:09) No, I'm on Royal Duty because I'm intensely patriotic.

(sent at 03:10) I have one word for you: Camilla.

(sent at 03:11) Still a member of the Royal Family.

(sent at 03:15) Queen Consort my arse. Nobody does Royal Duty watching her and Chaz by choice, and if you are, I'm worried about you, get help. He caught you.

(sent at 03:20) It was AWFUL!

(sent at 03:21) Ease up on the capitals, you're still on the clock.

(sent at 03:22) Sorry.

(sent at 03:42) Looks like a sniper. NW, 5 up, 3 across.

(sent at 03:43) Not any more. Amateur.

(sent at 03:44) Do we get a bonus every time we get a headshot?

(sent at 03:46) You know we don't. Order a cleanup.

* * *

**YOU ARE INVITED TO**

_The Mycroft Minions'_

**CHRISTMAS PARTY**

**When:** the little lord Jesus' stolen birthday

**Where:** go to Trafalgar Square. A woman will be wearing a blue rose. Say 'the coolness of your smile is the stirring of birds in my arms'. She will reply 'innit though'. Ask her for directions. Ask again. The third answer should be correct.

There will be a _homicidal maniac in the_ raffle.

* * *

_**I know who is responsible for that 'party invitation'.**_

David looked at Reginald. "Any point running?"

Reginald looked at David. "Nope."


	21. Horizon

**Prompt**: Change something fundamental about the Sherlock show and write about it. Can be long, short, poetry - you choose!

Examples/Ideas:  
- inhuman!Characters  
- John and Sherlock don't investigate murders, they ...

Roll with it guys!

First thought: ...I have an excuse for Dracula poetry?

* * *

**Horizon**

**1.**

Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!

**2.**

John speaks high school German, but has never read Grimm in its own shape. He doesn't know the fairy tale tongue that speaks in locked rooms behind which hide love or death, or sometimes both.

In Grimm, John would be the boy who did not know what fear was.

In Grimm, he would open his chest and the wolf would be there.

**3.**

When John wakes, it is sunset, and Sherlock is at his bedside. "Did you sleep well?"

John pauses, relearns the shape of his teeth and tongue before opening his mouth. "Yes," he rasps.

Sherlock smiles as if he knows he is lying. "Walk with me," he says. "Let me show you my kingdom."

"There are locked doors," John echoes. "Where you will not of course wish to enter."

"When I walk with you, no door is locked to you."

"When you are not?"

"Then of course the doors remain locked," Sherlock says, and leaves to allow John some privacy to dress.

John shaves by touch and guesswork, one hand held out before him, an empty curve in which to cradle a mirror.

**4.**

He: a breath of air, a shadow, the shape of a cloud, the notes of a violin.

**5.**

"John," Sherlock says.

With his name, John remembers to shape of himself - but Sherlock never did say his name like anybody else John has ever met.

"Yes?"

Sherlock shakes his head and _looks_ at him with hungry smile, hungry eyes, hungry everything.

Or: not hungry. Ardent. Both as dangerous as the other.

"Tell me where you wish to go."

"Anywhere is good to me," John says, "so long as I go with you."

**6.**

This is my castle: 221B Baker Street.

This is my kingdom: London.

This is my vow: for this is my kingdom and my castle and you are my knight and the oath of king is threefold: to protect what is in my power, to right what has been made wrong, to offer hope for a happier future.

I will lead you only into battles worthy of you, I will strive to make this kingdom we call ours a place in which you will thrive. All the nightmares that haunt you I will destroy so long as you only believe in me.

Believe in me, and I can do anything.

_This is my home:_ 221B Baker Street. here I eat and sleep and fight and love and dream; here I stand fast, sworn to defend from all harm.

_This is my battlefield:_ London, its dark alleys and shadowed corners, the dangers (only some men-shaped) waiting, and I am ready to meet them all.

_This is my oath:_ I will be true to myself. I will never doubt my way. here I have made my place. here I stand. here will I fall.

**7.**

The dark was never something John feared.

When he was young.

When he was small.

The dark was something John felt he ought to fear, before the wolf licked his throat and lapped away the shape of something small that thought in shoulds and oughts.

Now the dark is something that enfolds him: a coat, a lover's arms.

**8.**

This is the secret: life does not unfold like a map, a path, a flower, a choice.

Sherlock Holmes offered his hand; John Watson took it.

**9.**

John dreams.

**10.**

Sherlock's mouth, hot with blood, and John's skin, cold with shock, papers torn and crumpled in his hand, fresh ink smearing his fingers like a reminder, but of what he has no idea when Sherlock sighs and takes his face in his hands, tilts his head back and murmurs "look at me".

John looks: the moon shining through the window, Sherlock's dark hair, his shining eyes, his head bent towards him, and somewhere far away skin yields to the press of teeth.

He says something, he feels the movements of his throat beneath Sherlock's teeth and tongue and lips, a vibration, an echo.

Somewhere far away, warm wet movement against his neck, the shape of a word.

**11.**

He is something tangible to Sherlock's aether: the lungs, moving, a living body in the sun, the earth beneath the feet, a song.

**12.**

This is the hunt: a man, a woman, a corpse, laid out. A body speaking without breath, speaking with its clothes, its paint, its perfume, its calluses, its wounds, its intact skin.

Listen: written somewhere is a name, a scent, a sound.

In it is the hunt.

**13.**

Vampire is the word. There is no secret in it.

**14.**

Come freely. – the happiness you bring!


	22. Necessary Magics

**Prompt: **Change something fundamental about the Sherlock show and write about it. Can be long, short, poetry - you choose!

Examples/Ideas:  
- inhuman!Characters  
- John and Sherlock don't investigate murders, they ...

Roll with it guys!

My second thought: ALL the sentient London fic! Well thank God I'm not predictable. /blatant lies.

...by the time I put this on AO3 it'll have grown chapters.

* * *

**Necessary Magics**

London is sitting on the edge of the bed when John wakes up.

It's wearing the shape of a five year old girl, which is slightly better than last time, when John woke up to something with pigeon wings instead of arms and what he half-suspected was a rat tail poking out from its jeans. Slightly, because London never gets the eyes right and John suspects Lovecraft would write odes to bottomless abyss that is London's fondest glance.

"Yuneehnsmthin?" John slurs, filing London's presence under 'threat, but likes me' and resolving to go back to sleep.

London tilts its head and nods once, decisively, kicking its heels. It's wearing knee-high socks and neat black shoes polished to mirror shine John's drill sergeant would burst into tears to see. It may or may not also be wearing a dress, John's not sure and doesn't want to look.

"Glatuhel," John says, rolling over and pressing his face into his pillow, secretly resolving to carve warding sigils on every doorframe in the place. Not that that would do anything to help, of course. Even if he wasn't in the city, it would still be exercise in futility trying to keep it out. "Wuhdyanee?"

London whispers its request. Unfortunately, a London whisper is the clap of a hundred pigeon wings opening at once, the honking of a thousand car horns, a hundred thousand fox screams and the sound of a million feet hitting the pavement – suffice to say, _loud_.

There is no sleeping through that. "Ow," John says, and, "We've talked about this," because human ears are delicate business and he can't hear himself speak right now, what with the ringing in his ears – Big Ben is especially loud.

London looks vaguely apologetic, in the sense that it has no idea what an apology is and therefore its look can be taken to mean anything.

"Yeah, I know I'm a little late," John says, or thinks he does, because he can feel his mouth move but still can't hear yet. This is not, he thinks resignedly as he pulls his socks on, what he signed up for. He's pretty sure he signed _something_ though, so at least he knows who has his contract and that life isn't just pissing on him for the fun of it.

London smiles a wide gap-toothed grin at the sight of a curious rat, drawn by London's scent. It promptly scoops the rodent up with impossibly quick hands and eats it.

"Swallow your food," John says, annoyed that despite the fact he _knows_ his hearing hasn't returned yet, he's still convinced he can hear the slurping noise London makes as it sucks the rat's tail into its mouth like a piece of spaghetti.

After a long moment in which John just knows London is considering spitting the rat back out, it starts chewing.

"This is my actual life," John tells the tea stain on his desk. The tea stain, by virtue of being tea, does actually provide a little comfort. Being a stain, that comfort is woefully inadequate to the task.

John decides to fortify himself and puts the kettle on. Behind him, London makes a very quiet garbled noise that sounds suspiciously like 'omnomnom'.

* * *

The reason for John's rude awakening is the Alderman Walk, which is neither a guided tour nor a job-specific way of walking but a sacred task and awesome responsibility – and completely without perks. Properly, it's The Walk of the Twenty-Sixth Alderman, but that's a bit pretentious for a bloke currently wearing a woolly jumper, never mind the odd socks.

The Twenty-Sixth Alderman is London's own chosen, and his or her purpose, as far as John can tell, is to be London's spiritual dogsbody. Whatever London needs, if it's magical in some way, it's the job of the Twenty-Sixth Alderman to do something about it.

Which is not to say he doesn't take care of London in more mundane ways – currently London is skipping next to him swathed in his coat because he's still not sure whether or not it's wearing the requisite amount of clothes to be out in public. Given enough time, he's pretty sure he'll be able to convince it that clothing isn't optional when it's human shaped, but until then it's just another part of the service.

The Walk of the Twenty-Sixth Alderman occurs quarterly every year (alternating between the four festivals and the solstices and equinoxes) and has been done exactly the same way for centuries, before many of the physical trappings of it actually existed.

First, because the Walk is traditional and Tradition sticks its middle finger up at Common Sense every chance it gets, he checks the Seven Gates, starting at Aldgate, ending with Ludgate and zig-zagging between the other five as he pleases.

Second, because the Walk is traditional and Tradition likes to bugger Common Sense every chance it gets, he walks the Wall, over and between the Gates he's checked and refortified.

Third, because the Walk is traditional and Tradition likes to make Common Sense scream for mercy and sob like a baby every chance it gets, he visits and feeds the Boundary Guardians, some of which he's passed twice already while checking the Gates and walking the Wall.

Tradition, John thinks darkly, can go drown itself in the Fleet. _After_ the sewer conversion.

"I'm an invalided soldier, you know," he tells London when they (or he does, at least) stop for a rest after the London Bridge rite. London nods patiently and pats him on the leg. John hopes the red stain at the corner of its mouth will be taken for ketchup.

"I mean, I know I'm not limping any more but this is still an act of wanton cruelty. What have you got against straight lines anyway?"

London rolls its eyes. John can tell, despite the fact that he's facing the opposite direction, because normally, well-dressed bankers don't suddenly stop, drop to the pavement and start frothing at the mouth.

"I love you," John tells London, watching the man scream, "But you really are a bit hard to like."

London burbles something in the language of rivers. It means either 'love you too' or 'fuck off and die'; it depends which one the Thames has said more.

John heaves a great woe-is-me sigh and continues the Alderman Walk. "You could at least pay me in sterling," he says reproachfully. "Not that I don't appreciate the brownie housekeeping service or the green lights or the 'happy work life' charm you've put on me – which would be more useful if I actually had a mundane job, by the way – but is it really too much to ask that I be able to pay my rent? I check your fortifications, I renew the magic, I guard the borders – you could be a little more grateful."

John is immune to London's 'you adorable moron' look – when you've seen it performed by something with duck feet, it's just impossible to ever take seriously again.

"How about a better title, then? I mean, if my ward is all the wards, shouldn't I be mayor or something instead of an alderman?"

The 'you adorable moron' acquires a shade more exasperation and a tad less affection.

"Fine," John says fondly. "Whatever. At your service."

London nods proudly and shows its now pointed teeth in a wide grin, which John takes to mean 'well, yes. Yes, you are.'

* * *

With the Imbolc Walk completed, the wards are all renewed, the boundary stones and guardians all fed, and the great web of defensive and offensive magic layering the Wall and Gates rewoven into a different pattern. (That's John's personal contribution to the office of Twenty-Sixth Alderman, because how can you expect to keep the City protected if the magic remains exactly the same and therefore possible for someone to unravel and neutralise, given enough years of study?

Aldermen are going to curse his name for at least a century, but they deserve it, the bunch of slackers.)

John's just thankful that the City is his only responsibility as far as the grand rites go (Westminster too, at a push – which is quite often, actually). If he had to do all the boroughs himself it would probably take him a year to do one Walk.

London purrs like a well-fed cat, a noise that it shouldn't be able to make in a human body, although the impossibility doesn't seem to bother it any. John realises after a minute that it's actually making the noise of an idling car engine, which makes much more sense.

"You okay?" He asks, a little suspicious, because it's never purred after a Walk before. Looked a little smug, maybe, and once, drunk on an exceptionally powerful rite performed every seven years on the Winter or Summer solstice, floated a foot above the ground for the rest of the day, but purring is new. And worrying.

London opens its mouth and breathes out the smell of a fish and chip shop.

"Oh," John says, relaxing a little. "Well, if that's all, we can go to The Rock and Sole Plaice? Or if you're just hungry and don't really mind, there's always – London – London, don't eat out of bins!"

He chases after it, determined to catch up before it caught a fox (again) and then left the still-warm and slightly sticky skin on his bed in a mistaken attempt at a fur coverlet (again).

He follows London's giggles (which sound like every Hollywood movie's idea of a Victorian insane asylum) for quite a way before he suddenly realises where London is leading him and stops short. He tries to hold back a scream, not because it frightens him but because London has taken his hand, and, being London, may have inadvertently crushed the bones to powder. "_No_," John tells it firmly, the exasperated voice of a pet owner faced with an exuberant puppy. "No. Bad London."

London looks up at him, too fast for him to look away, and John's mind goes somewhere far away to dance with a pretty girl with multicoloured hair as the only preferable alternative to snapping like a dry twig.

When his mind comes back, a little woozy but still intact, London has dragged him to the door that John is always aware of and can _feel_ from halfway across the city.

"This is ridiculous," John tells London in what he hopes is a firm and believable sort of voice. "Stop matchmaking."

London gives him a look only achievable by the very old or the very young, calling into doubt his mental faculties, sexual proclivities, genetic heritage and future offspring. It's remarkably cowing coming from what looks like a five year old, even if said child _does _have a mouth full of inhumanly pointy teeth.

John raises a hand to knock, only for the door to 221B Baker Street to be flung open with an impatient "Finally!"

"Hhnh," John says, because he didn't become the Twenty-Sixth Alderman on dumb luck alone and is actually quite good at sensing magic.

"Do you know how long I've been waiting for you?" demands the man. "What kept – oh right, yes, of course – enter of your own free will, I give my permission, etcetera, etcetera and so on and so forth."

"Wha?" John says with all the coherence of the recently sledge-hammered.

The man – and if he's actually one hundred percent pure human, John is a postbox, that face is just not natural – rolls his eyes and drags him inside, London one pleased step behind them.

"I was expecting you three days ago! What if it had been the Solstice and Equinox Year?"

"Sorry," John says automatically, and continues to stare. "You're a _Necessary_," he says before he can stop himself, with something like wonder in his voice.

It's John's job to know the magic of London. Nobody would blame him if he took after his predecessors and only learned the basics of the other boroughs, content to confine himself solely to his domain and place of power, but that's not John's way, and even if it was – well, they're called _the Necessary Magics_ for a reason.

Despite its importance, the Walk of the Twenty-Sixth Alderman is not a Necessary magic, although some of its creatures and places are. It is human in origin and perpetuation – the Necessary magics are London-made and maintained, created to fill an absence or need only London knew ever existed. They slip into the city's magical landscape as if they have always been there, and it is almost impossible to imagine the city without them.

The Tower is a place of Necessary magic, for instance, as are many others – the spirits of magic users who attempted harm against the city hang forever upon the Tyburn Tree as if it was never dismantled three centuries before; if you know how to look, their heads can be seen rotting upon stakes on the shadow-shape of old London Bridge as a warning. (And that's London's idea of mercy; sometimes it gives them to Bedlam.)

There are the Guardians, the Patrons and the Guides, and some of the roles and offices a magician of London might take are Necessary – but that doesn't mean London won't destroy them if they start thinking of themselves as more important than the average hedgewitch. Performing a Necessary function doesn't make the office-bearer in themselves Necessary, it just makes them useful. And occasionally dead, but that isn't something John really wants to think about.

Necessary magic that is human-shaped is rare; one that isn't bound to a place or form of transport is rarer still, and there is only one John can think of off the top of his head that is so young its first appearance is still within (wizardly) living memory.

"Do you hate me?" John asks London pitifully. "The Great Detective? Really?"

London beams at him, stroking a human skull like a Bond villain with a cat. John determinedly does not ask _where_ it came from.

"I said I didn't need any help finding a flatmate."

"Obviously you do or you would have been here three days ago," the Detective says acerbically.

"I don't know, did you make an appointment?" John says.

The Detective gives London a pointed look.

"You made an appointment with _London_? The last time it spoke to me before today it was stark naked and wearing neon lipstick! I thought it was trying to tell me I needed to get laid, and the reason it kept pointing at your door was because you were up for a good time!"

"It was a Friday night, wasn't it? _London_ was up for a good time. You shouldn't conflate the messenger with the message."

"When the city is the messenger, it _is_ the message!"

"Well, if your definition of 'good time' involves corpses, moral ambiguity, or danger in any shape or form, then I _am_, as you say, 'up for it'."

"London wept," John mutters, earning himself a quizzical glance from the city in question, which then rubs at its face and holds up its fingers to prove it is not in fact crying.

Ignoring him completely, the Detective says, "The name's Sherlock Holmes."

"Of course it is," John says blankly, because he's pretty sure that if London gets its way this awkward first meeting that any sane man would run away from is going to turn into epic partnership of legend in which he will rarely if ever get the chance to use the 'duh' tone of voice.

You get the feel for that kind of thing when you're one of London's keepers.

John bows to the inevitable and completes the contract. "I'm John H Watson," he says, and tries not to flinch because the sensation of name magic has always bothered him a little, never mind true name exchange. It tastes a bit like liquorice, which John can't stand. Maybe Harry's actually right and they've got some fey blood somewhere. Except Harry's never actually had this problem, and anyway, they're pretty obviously city magicians – John has London's pleased hum in the back of his head as proof of that.

(holmes mydearwatson deathlesswords afghanistaniperceive bestandwisest mine oohdestinyandcorpses)

He almost has it, the reason for the liquorice taste of name magic – as if looking at the Detective has some sort of influence on his own ability to grasp wispy bits of logic – when he's distracted by a different elephant, this one in a tutu. "Wait," he says, hit by an moment of blinding epiphany, "_you're_ Westminster's Custodian!" He whirls on London, only momentarily put off by the fact that it now looks like it could pass for (Holmes, Sherlock, _Sherlock_) the Detective's twin, if said twin was Victorian in dress and manners. "What were you thinking?" John demands, bewildered. "You _know_ he can't do a lot of the rites!"

"Actually," Sherlock corrects, "my brother is Westminster's Custodian. However, he doesn't see why he should limit himself and spreads his influence wide. There's certainly enough of him to cover London," he adds under his breath.

John doesn't want to be rude, but he really can't think of a polite way to ask 'can anthropomorphic constructs of thought-based city magic have siblings?'

"Right," he says blankly. London strokes its waistcoat and croons to itself in birdsong. No help there and why is John even a little surprised? "And your... brother – he's a Necessary too?"

"Yes. In his darker aspect he's the secret service, but most typically you'll meet him in his function as the British government. Hence, he's the older brother."

John slides imperceptibly back towards the door as London abandons its contemplation of a rather battered pocket watch to snigger quietly.

"Yes, yes," Sherlock says with a long-suffering nod, "we were very amused by _Nineteen Eighty-Four_. The jokes have yet to get old."

London hums the Big Brother theme unrepentantly. Looking at it – skull in one hand, pipe in the other, cravat moving restlessly around its neck like a snake – John is reminded of his occasional urge to spend a day filming it and then put the resulting piece of surrealist cinema on YouTube.

Sherlock ignores it to tell John 'not to worry' about his brother – "You've been a good soldier, haven't you? He'd give you some leeway for that, even if you weren't my flatmate."

John has a sudden, chilling suspicion of the sort of things that could happen to him if this brother – British government, what has John done to deserve this? – _wasn't_ inclined to give him some leeway. He gives London a wild-eyed look. London obviously knows about his thoughts of YouTube fame because it starts juggling.

"I'm not your flatmate," John says frantically. "I don't recall agreeing to live with you, or signing anyth– fuck."

London doesn't even have the decency to pause in its juggling to produce a very long roll of parchment, an entire section of dense legalese (section 14, articles 1-18g, Living Arrangements) highlighted in hot pink.

'...having sworn service unto the metropolis of London until such a time as I am released, and having said oath been Witnessed, consecrated and bound by blood and True Name, I do agree to dwell wheresoever the City finds itself desirous of my services...'

It's definitely John's signature on the far end of the parchment, his blood and oath.

The contracts are looked over by _fairies_, City's sake, John should have seen this coming, it's just – _nobody_ reads section 14. 'London will provide' is what section 14 says.

John still makes a futile attempt at free will. "...I shoot people."

"Excellent, you can defend yourself. It's very likely that you'll need to at some point, and magical attackers very rarely take mundane methods into account."

John stares at him.

"Oh, you meant it as a deterrent? Justice is my sphere, you'll find – the Law is another matter entirely. How do you feel about the violin? I dabble in the tradition sometimes."

John chokes back a horrified groan. _Dabble_. In Orpheus' sphere, one of the oldest, most potent forms of magecraft – as casually as he can manage, which isn't much, he asks, "Any good?"

"Music is subjective," Sherlock shrugs easily, eyes glittering with some secret amusement. London gives John a thumbs-up behind his back. "How good are you with necromancy and its associated wardings?"

"Um." John says. "Good. ...Sorry, _why_ would you need necromantic wards in particular? Are you talking defense, protection, repulsion, welcome...? Really not getting this."

"I like to have all bases covered. And flatmates should know enough about each other to judge adequately whether or not their coexistence will be worth the trouble, don't you think? Are you likely to dreamwalk?"

"...I don't think so. Are you?"

"I may do so during an investigation, if I have no other recourse – but in over a hundred and thirty years I've never had cause to, so no. Let's see, what else... Sometimes I don't speak for days – not as part of any silence vow, I just won't. Will that bother you?"

John heroically refrained from saying anything along the lines of how it looked like it would be a relief. "Uh, no." He thought about the sort of things that meant no previous attempts at flatsharing had worked out. "I keep London's hours, and I'll try to be considerate and everything, but I hope you're not very attached to sleep-"

"I'm not."

"—and sometimes, my job... well, I'll try not to open any gates to other realms of existence or anything. Unless I have to."

"I promise the same, then."

London beams at them both, twisting ribbons of bloody life magic between its fingers into a tangled Gordian loop without end or beginning.

"Well then," Sherlock Holmes says, lets London fold one loop around his wrist, "Welcome at last, John H Watson, to 221B Baker Street."


	23. Heartlines

**Prompt: **As soon as he can after the Fall, Sherlock sneaks back into Baker Street and hides his heart somewhere in the flat. John either doesn't find it or only finds it after some time has passed, so he doesn't realize it's Sherlock's, but the sound of it beating comforts him when nothing else can.

* * *

John keeps his heart in an old tin meant for keeping tea, small, rusting and inconspicuous.

It's unexpectedly small, John's heart, if you're not bothering to observe, as most people wouldn't. Most people looking at John's heart, small enough to fit into a child's palm, would think him detached, indifferent to others, untouched by any of the emotions that make a heart grow. John would never let his heart be seen up close to prove them wrong.

Sherlock studies the grooves, the scars, the evidence of countless bites and knives taken to it, of the many times John has divided his heart into pieces and given them away. What remains is pure John, and its steady unrelenting beat is so much stronger than would be expected from something so shrunken and small.

It's not pretty. More scar than heart, really, although it's healing, slowly, as all hearts do. Despite that, Sherlock knows that if he touched it, it would be soft under his fingertips – proof that while John may have learned to hide his heart he has never learned how to stop giving it away to anyone in need, anyone who asks, anyone who wants it and plenty who don't, who have no idea what a gift it is.

He doesn't touch it.

The tin no longer smells of tea. John's heart is torn open as he stands to attention at Sherlock's funeral, its steady beat turned into the reedy, exhausted whisper of blood endlessly expelled.

Sherlock's own heart – as anatomically correct as John's, though marked with the intricate web of a London road map rather than veins – gives a terrible shuddering lurch in his pocket.

It is larger than John's, barely touched, and won't fit inside the tin to rest next the one that needs it most. It would have, before he and John met – but then, he would not have wanted to put his heart in this tin before they met.

Sherlock wants very badly to touch John's heart, to press the gaping edges together and try to seal them shut with his fingers, anything to stop looking at the raw open wound of it.

_we did this_, he thinks he hears his own heart say, his sleek untouched heart, smooth as glass and twice as hard.

He puts the lid back on the tin, leaves John's heart alone in the dark, swimming in its own blood and hurt. He can't take it with him.

He thinks he might be starting to panic. Funerals don't last forever.

_somewhere he can hear me,_ counsels his heart. He imagines it has a very low voice, hoarse and unused, and he gives a soft, desperate huff of laughter because _he's_ never heard his own heart before.

_stupid_, says his heart._ I'm not here for you. I never was._

* * *

When John finds Sherlock's heart, Sherlock feels it.

He feels John's fingers tracing featherlight across the network of streets and alleys and roads and lanes, every one of them neatly labelled and named.

The name of the heart's owner, carved at the centre of a great cluster of roads, is visible only when the light hits it just right, and Sherlock can't feel John's touch there.

When he gets home he'll point it out to John. He'll take his hand and guide his finger across the tiny letters and say 'look, you are here' and John will choke back laughter at the terrible pun.

When he goes home.

In the meantime, his heart sings.


	24. Jawn of the Dead

**Prompt: **Sherlock comes home to 221B after faking his death. John and Lestrade had just been watching Dawn of the Dead, while drinking, so they think Sherlock is a zombie and keep trying to kill him. Again.

* * *

"If anybody could come back as a zombie," Lestrade said, waving his beer can at the screen in what he clearly thought was an explanatory manner, "If anybody could. You know."

"Sherlock," John agreed.

"Yeah," Lestrade said.

"It'd be for science," John said with an air of resignation, the same tone he'd use for heads in the fridge, hallucinogens in the sugar, flatmates coming back from the dead... "'Sorry John'," he made a passable attempt at mimicking Sherlock ability to speak at a speed just shy of _holy fuck was that all one word_, "'But of course I had to test the possibility of sustainable life past total brain death – why are you upset, is it because I made you watch me swan-dive off a building, I needed a trained medical professional to ensure there could be no questions about my deceased state, it was necessary – by the way I'm going to be keeping brains in the bathtub from now on.'"

He took a deep shuddering breath and watched the zombie on screen eat someone. "Fuck science."

"...I don't think science can consent to that kind of thing," Lestrade said.

"It would for Sherlock," John said. "The things he did to common sense, I wouldn't be surprised if he could make physics cry."

"Dunno, John, you're the doctor – do zombies come under the heading of physics?"

John thought about it. "Biochemistry and biophysics," he said firmly at last. "It was on a test."

Lestrade had one of those moments that happened less frequently with Sherlock gone, the sensation of the world slipping to one side with the acquisition of knowledge. "Christ, they test doctors on that sort of thing now?"

"No, it was a test I gave the lads in the squad. Afghanistan's the worst place to be turned into a zombie, the rate you'd decay."

And Sally was always so confused as to why John Watson would flatshare with Sherlock Holmes.

"So." Lestrade said after an awkward pause. Well. Awkward for him. John looked preoccupied with his staring match with the skull. "Zombie Sherlock."

"Yeah." John said. "I went – the first few days, you know – I went to the, the. Graveyard. Waiting for him to dig his way out. Had a shovel and everything, in case he needed help." His expression crumpled, like a mournful jumper-wearing wrinkly-faced puppy. "Only he didn't. He didn't want any help at all. Wanted to stay down there."

Lestrade thought about saying he was probably just distracted by the experience and study of decay, but was not quite drunk enough to risk another of John's crumple-faced expressions of woe. "S'okay," he said gently.

"s'not," John said miserably. "Typical Sherlock. No understanding of fucking universal laws except the one time it mattered. _Then _he decides to pay attention."

"Fuck him," Lestrade said loudly in an attempt at bolstering dismissiveness. "Er. ...you didn't, did you?"

"Still not gay," John said, with the resignation of someone who'd long grown used to everyone and their grandmother cooing over his relationship with his flatmate.

"Well, you've been kind of. Mourning period. Sad face. Victorian widow thing."

John stared at him. "What?"

"What?"

"No, what? Was that supposed to make sense?"

"I don't know, was it?" Lestrade said desperately. "I'm just saying. That's all. I can see Sherlock at the door." He blinked. One of those things didn't seem to match up to the rest. Wait. "I can see Sherlock. Standing in the doorway. That's not right."

"Fuck off," John said.

"No, seriously, zombie!"

John looked.

Sherlock looked back, hands held out in what was probably meant to be a placatory gesture and instead only hit every movie ingrained 'zombie! panic!' button in John's head.

"Gun!" John barked in such an authoritative tone Lestrade almost forgot the illegality of the request. He gave John a Look as he fought with the armchair to turn it into a blockade. The armchair must have taken advantage of his distraction, because it was winning.

"John–" Sherlock said urgently as Lestrade used the chair to shove him outside of the room before hastily slamming the door in his face.

"Not gun!" John corrected. "Harpoon!"

"What_._" Lestrade said, though he wasn't, strangely, really surprised.

"John–"

"There's one in here somewhere!"

"_What._"

"Knife knife knife," John chanted, lunging towards the fireplace and the yellowed papers impaled there. "No, fuck, that's short range..."

"John, this is getting out of hand now, I'm _sorry_, just let me in-"

"Oh god, we're going to die," Lestrade said, his back against the door, giving up wrestling with the armchair. "We are too drunk to defend ourselves against zombie attack. All that training at Hendon, wasted."

"Speak for yourself," John said, tripping over his own feet in his search for a suitable long-range weapon.

"Oh for – I am not a zombie!"

"And I bet he complains about our brains afterwards!"

John paused, halfway under the table. "Well, yeah," he said, one eyebrow making a drunken attempt to raise itself. "It's _Sherlock_."

"Your brains would be useless as nourishment anyway!"

"See?" Lestrade said, outraged.

"Zombies are not articulate, you imbecilic drunkards!"

"You _would _be the exception!" John bellowed back, grabbing a box full of papers and flinging it aside when he realised there was nothing in it that could be used for decapitation. "Chattiest bloody zombie in the history of ever-"

"I'm not dead! I never was! I faked it!"

In the middle of his makeshift barricade, Lestrade giggled, clearly unable to help himself while under the influence.

"...I really think I'd prefer you to be a zombie."

"I said I was sorry – it was to protect you – Moriarty –"

"Fuck Moriarty with a pointy stick!"

There was silence from the other side of the door.

"See, that's why people wonder about you," Lestrade announced. "Well no," he corrected himself, "If there's a tearful reunion in five minutes and you swoon like a Regency heroine and then forgive him everything because he's your bestest ever friend and it's only brains the bathtub and the occasional murder to keep him fed and sort of alive and that's worth some emotional torture, _that's _why people wonder."

There was an even longer stretch of silence.

"...Seriously, Greg, shut up."

"You are not helping, Lestrade."

"I'm calling it like I see it," Lestrade said with whatever passed for dignity in the drunk.

"And that is why you are a terrible detective, shut up!"

"You're a zombie, I'm not arguing with a fucking zombie!"

"Just – Open. The. Door."

"Go on, Greg," John nodded encouragingly, "I c'n hit him with this chair."

"...You do realise I can hear you...?"

Lestrade opened the door.

The attempt to hit Sherlock with the chair didn't quite work out, to put it mildly. John was drunk, Sherlock wasn't, and even mostly dead, he was smart enough to remember how to duck.

"This was not the sort of greeting I was expecting," he said.

John scowled up at him from his position on the floor.

"Yeah? What sort of greeting were you expecting?"

"I thought you might faint. I brought brandy, just in case. Now, check my pulse. Please don't make me get signed certification of my alive state from Mycroft."

The crumple-face of woe made its triumphant return. "It's okay, Sherlock, we can handle this, what's a few brains between friends? You can keep them in the bath, if you like."

Lestrade had once hit his head repeatedly against the nearest wall in preparation every time he saw Sherlock appear at a crime scene; the sight of Sherlock performing the same action was immensely gratifying.

"I. Am. Alive."

"That's what all the zombies would say if they could," John said.

From the look of frustration on his face, Lestrade rather thought Sherlock was wishing he'd stayed dead.


	25. Three Dialogue Minifills

**Three Dialogue Only Crossover Minifills**

(**Prompt:** Sherlock doesn't know it yet, but his little 'network' of homeless people has earned him the attention of the people of London Below.

What happens from there is up to you.)

* * *

_**Network**_

"...Looks like someone's in trouble."

"You know you're not supposed to be able to see me?"

"Really?"

"...I think so. They keep telling me that's how it works, anyway."

"Mm. So, do you want help? I don't quite have the power necessary to get you out of this without any consequences whatsoever but I'm sure my brother could-"

"Your brother?"

"Mycroft."

"...And what will he ask in exchange for his help?"

"A favour, probably. To be held until whenever convenient."

"Sorry, no deal."

"Why not? You're not getting out of this on your own."

"We've already got a bloody Marquis, thanks. Two of them is just tempting the universe to collapse."

"Well, then, in exchange for the mess _I'm_ going to be in, helping you out, do you have any objection passing on information from time to time?"

* * *

(**Prompt: **Sherlock meets the Nac Mac Feegle)

* * *

_**Family**_

"Sherlock. Help."

"John? What is going on here? What - just what are _those_?"

"Ye ken this 'un, Big John?"

"Uh. 's my flatmate."

"Yer what?"

"Shoul' we chib 'im?"

"Wai', wai', this one's verra big..."

"John. _What is this?_"

"Erm. Nac Mac Feegle?"

"That doesn't answer my question. At all."

"Well, yes, it does because - don't frown like that Sherlock-"

"Why shouldn't I frown when I find my flatmate accosted by dozens of six-inch bright blue little... Glaswegians?"

"Wha' did ye call us, ye big heap o' jobbies!"

"Stay back, boys, the knees o' this scunner are _mine_!"

"Bang went Saxpence!"

"Doon wi' big-jobs!"

"...They'll take it as a challenge."

* * *

(**Prompt: **When John was five, Harriet accidentally wished him away. She won him back, of course, but John remembered everything. Jareth decides that just because one Watson won't have him, doesn't mean the younger one won't. He shows up at 221B Baker Street looking for John.

Sherlock is not amused.)

* * *

_**Confrontation**_

"Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave."

"Not interested."

"...'Not interested'? What do you mean, 'not interested'?"

"Just that. Sorry."

"_Sorry_? Sorry!"

"Look, it's not that you're not gorgeous and all-"

"Well then-"

"I mean, I _get_ that there are probably hundreds - thousands - _millions_? -"

"My, your kind has had a population explosion since last I looked..."

"-of women - and men - out there ready to tear those tights off if you just happen to look in their general direction but-"

"But?"

"You're not my type."

"I'm _everybody's _type!"

"I'm gay!"

"So?"

"_So? _You've got the wrong equipment!"

"You only say that because you haven't tried it."

"I like boobs!"

"Mm, so do I. At least we have something in common."

"See? That right there! You don't know anything about me!"

"...I know your dreams. Everything you've ever wanted, everything you've ever asked for, everything you've never dared to ask for. Every... secret... little... thought. And you say I don't _know _you?"

"Stop waving your balls in my face! I'm trying to let you down gently here!"

"Oh, do go on."

"Okay. Look. I can appreciate, you know, it's very impressive - actually, I think I've got one at home about that size-"

"...I'm not going to ask."

"-but I still don't want to see it anywhere except _in_ your pants. Different pants. I mean, have you _heard _of leaving anything to the imagination?"

"Harriet, my dear, there are succubi who would be ashamed to wear what you do."

"Right, fairy boy, I have six words for you: piss off and give John back!"


End file.
